By DANIEL WATTENBURGER

The Hermiston Herald

If you haven’t heard of Stanfield’s freshman sprinter Danny Angel, that’s all right. He’s been at it just a couple of weeks.

His second track meet of the season came Friday at the Blue Mountain Conference meet, and after a good day at Riverside High School he’s taking the show to the state meet this weekend.

Angel won the district title in the 200-meter with a time of 24:31, finished second in the 100 (11.74) and anchored the 4×100 relay team to a gold to punch three tickets to the state meet.

Though the freshman trained throughout the school year, he was unable to compete because he didn’t have insurance. Former coach Art Derbyshire took the initiative and covered Angel, allowing the young runner to compete at the Heppner meet, the district meet and the upcoming state meet.

He began Friday’s meet with the 4×100 relay, and in the final stretch passed Enterprise’s Jacob Micka to win the race for the team.

“It was pretty scary at first with him ahead of me,” Angel said after the race, but before qualifying in the other sprints. “But I knew I could catch him and I knew I had to. It’s really nice to win this as a freshman and be going to state.”

He also said it was nice to win a race so early in the day, and felt it would help him relax in his later races.

Joining Angel and his 4×100 relay team at the state meet at Western Oregon University Friday and Saturday will be Jose Mancilla in the 400-meter race and Brian Surber in the 300-meter hurdles. Mancilla also is a part of the relay team with Ivan Sanchez, Salvador Mancilla, Kameron Watson and Hector Esquivel.

Julio Orozco from host team Irrigon qualified to go to state in both the 1,500 and 3,000.