Unaware of where she placed in Saturday night’s OIA Varsity Track Championships at the time, Tiana Burgess felt she could have done better in the triple jump.

“I did tweak my ankle a little bit,” the Roosevelt senior said after getting her right ankle wrapped in ice in the end zone of Pearl City High School’s Edwin “Bino” Neves Stadium. “I didn’t do a jump the best that I could.”

At the time, Burgess was not aware of where she placed or how she did. What she did was set the OIA record at 37’ 5.5” and win by nearly a foot. After tweaking her ankle in the triple jump, she ran the 300-meter hurdles and won it with a time of 46.13 seconds to take her third event of the night and fourth OIA medal overall.

“To be honest, when I was in the blocks, I was scared, but at the same time, I had a lot of energy and stamina flowing through me,” she said. “I was like, ‘I’m going to run this race like it’s my last,’ so that’s what I did for the entire race, and I hit a new (personal record).”

To stay in shape for track season, Burgess also played football and girls basketball for Roosevelt, “(during football practice), they would make us run a lot,” she said. “Like we would run up and down hills.”

Instead of football this past fall, Burgess ran cross country to build her endurance and stamina. She won the long jump on Thursday, then proceeded to win the 100-meter hurdles along with the triple jump and 300 on Saturday. She also placed third in the girls’ 100-meter dash, .16 of a second behind the winner, Mililani’s Deiona Carter.

In the distance events, the boys 1,500-meter run record was broken on Saturday by Kalani junior Yuta Cole, who ran a time of 4:01.35 in the race. Cole won by about 14 seconds over Mililani’s Thomas Rosenbalm and broke his own personal record by nearly 19 seconds.

“Last year was my first year doing track — I didn’t really know what I was doing,” Cole said. “This year, I knew that if I put in the work and got high mileage and really went after it, set that as my goal, I’d knew I’d be able to achieve it. I was really happy and glad that I was able to get it today.”

In his first season running track, Cole won the 800 meters last season in the OIA championships. This year, he decided to focus on the 1,500 because he felt he had more potential in it and worked on improving his running form and being able to control himself when he’s tired.

“I really need to focus on being able to keep my form and keep pushing myself mentally,” he said. “It took a while to get used to, but I think I’m starting to get the hang of it.”

In the girls distance events, Mililani senior Zola O’Donnell set OIA records in both the 1,500-meter dash and 3,000-meter run, breaking the 1,500 record with a time of 4:48.94 and the 3,000 record with a time of 10:34.05.

“I’m really excited, but I think there’s still work to be done,” she said. “There’s still states coming up, so I’m happy today, but I got to keep training and working.”

O’Donnell “ran everything” last season and won the 800-meter run at the OIAs but transitioned to exclusively running the distance events this season because “doing it every single meet was really difficult,” she said.

“I’ve always loved distance, so this year, I decided that I’m going to specialize and focus on all the distance stuff because it’s easier to train and target the two distance events than try to train for everything.”

O’Donnell credited her track and field coach Nathan Aragaki and her Trojans teammates for how she was able to win by a large margin in both events — she won the 1,500 by 18 seconds and the 3000 by 28 seconds.

“I’m really proud of Mililani track and field and all the hard work they put in,” she said. “I just want to thank all my teammates and my coaches, and my friends from all the teams.”