By BROOKE BAXTER
Staff Writer 
Current University High School sprinters Senior Lance Deolden, Junior Yaseen Sattar, Junior Anthony Bonfa and former sprinter and long-distance runner, Junior Michael Blinstrub competed under University to place 6th overall in the 800 Sprint Medley Relay (SMR) at the California Winter Track and Field Championships. The meet took place at Arcadia High School on Saturday, February 8th with 960 competing athletes, running under 226 different schools.
The relay consisted of two 100 meter, one 200 meter, and one 400 meter leg. Satar ran the first 100 meters, passing it off to  Deolden for the second. Bonfa ran the 200 meter and Junior Blinstrub finished the relay off in the last 400 meters with a time of 1:37.2.
“I’m proud that we were able to find the time to practice together as we all have busy schedules. Sattar said.  Just qualifying to run in the SMR at Arcadia was exciting, but placing 5th in our heat and 6th overall was even more rewarding”.
The boys ran together and beat the qualifying time of 1:41.00 at Los Alamitos High School.
“It was quite the journey through winter track but we finally made it… Props to my SMR teammates who led us to a 6th place overall finish  and a 5th place finish in the team standings” Bonfa wrote in an Instagram post regarding the meet.
Runner Blinstrub ran cross country and track for two years prior to his transfer out of University halfway through this year. The Junior also ran the 600 and 300 meter with respective times of 1.23.89 and 36.93.
“Immediately coming off of Cross Country, I was determined to make it back to Arcadia for the 2020 California Winter Championships, with a small team of friends… as we planned 8 months ago” Blinstrub wrote in an Instagram post. “And we did, after multiple all-comers and qualifying meets, we finally made it to the one meet that we were determined to compete in.” Blinstrub continued with a thank you to his old teammates saying, “if it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t have pushed myself as hard as I did today”.