The winning hasn’t stopped for Curtis this season.
The Warriors have already won the PSAL city football title and it’s boys basketball squad recently took the SIHSL crown. So Jason Stapleton wasn’t about to let his team ruin all the fun.
“We had to keep the trend alive,” the senior distance star said. “We couldn’t let our Island down. We had to represent Curtis.”
They didn’t disappoint.
The Warriors stormed past the competition and beat out second place Susan Wagner, 163-129, at the PSAL Staten Island boys indoor track and field borough championships at the Armory in Washington Heights. McKee/Staten Island Tech finished third with 113 points.
Stapleton and Kareem Crawford were victorious in each of their events, helping Curtis claim its first crown since 2008.
“If we both came out and won our three events then we would have a good chance of taking the team title,” Stapleton, the cross country city champion, said.
Crawford, one of the top hurdlers in the city and a standout soccer player, won his events in style, breaking two school records in the process. He broke his own record in the 55 meter hurdles with a blistering time of 7.66 that puts him in the top five in the state. Running the 55 dash for the first time this year, no one expected him to break another school record. He topped the mark of Troy Faulkner, a former All-American in the 400, with a time of 6.80. He also won the 300 in 36.21.
“I was surprised because I didn’t know,” Crawford, a junior, said. “My coach told me. It felt good.”
Curtis assistant coach Donald Pierce said they only entered him in the event to help him work on his stride in the hurdles. He hopes to get Crawford, who has been hurdling for two years, to run close to the Staten Island record of 7.34 in the 55 hurdles. They are hoping for around 7.4 by the end of the season.
“He has a lot of potential,” Pierce said.
So does Stapleton. He had a disappointing junior campaign by his lofty standards and suffered stress-related injuries to his feet by season’s end. He has seemingly done nothing but win since.
Stapleton placed first in the 600 in a time of 1:23.94, edged out Susan Wagner’s Raul Avalos in the 1000 with a mark of 2:39.14 and won the 1600 in 4:30.59. He is ranked in the top 10 in the state in the 1600. Henrique Scott won the triple jump (44 feet, 5.25 inches), long jump (20-06.25) and high jump (5-08) for McKee/Staten Island Tech. The combination of Stapleton and Crawford, however, was too much to handle.
“We leaned on them,” Curtis head coach Ronald Banks said. “We told them to go out there and win three events and they both came up big.”
