Santa Rosa's Kirsten Carter takes 3rd in 400-meter dash at state track meet

Santa Rosa senior Kirsten Carter capped her high school career with a pair of races at the CIF state track and field championships in Clovis on Saturday, highlighted by a third-place performance in the 400-meter dash.

Carter, The Press Democrat’s Large School Female Athlete of the Year award winner, ran the nine-competitor 400 final in a time of 54.07 seconds - one and three-tenths’ seconds behind the winner, Tierra Robinson-Jones of Bishop O’Dowd High School in Oakland. Maliyah Medley of El Toro High School in Lake Forest finished between them in second place in 53.08 seconds.

Carter’s 54.07 is a personal record for her and a Redwood Empire record for the girls’ 400, the Santa Rosa High School athletic department noted in tweeting congratulations to her after the race.

About an hour and 45 minutes after running in the 400, Carter was back on the track at Buchanan High School for the final of the 200-meter dash.

This time, she finished sixth in the nine-girl race with a wind-legal time of 24.18 - still a personal record for her, the high school noted.

Robinson-Jones again came in first, slightly more than a half-second ahead of Carter with a time of 23.66 seconds.

The other Empire athlete competing on the second day of the state meet was Healdsburg’s Gabrielle Peterson, who finished 10th in a field of ?12 runners in the 1,600-meter ?final with a time of 4:54.16.

That was off her personal best of 4:48.91, which is fourth-fastest all time for a girl in the Redwood Empire.

Peterson led the 1,600 field after the first lap and was second at the halfway mark, but eventual winner Maddy Denner of Oak Ridge High School in El Dorado Hills turned on the jets in the third and final laps.

Denner ran the final lap more than seven seconds faster than Peterson and won in 4:42.768, more than 11 seconds ahead of the Healdsburg sophomore.

Other Empire athletes who competed in Friday’s preliminaries included Sonoma Academy’s Rylee Bowen in the girls’ 1,600, Maria Carrillo’s Habibah Sanusi in the girls’ 100-meter hurdles, the Carrillo boys’ 4x400-meter relay team and Santa Rosa’s Brayden Glascock in the boys’ 300-meter hurdles.