LJ track: Smith's the bomb

La Jolla's Payton Smith, running at the

Eastern League Finals May 6, 2022--my last

sighting of her on the track, (See below.)

(Photo by Ed Piper)

By Ed Piper

I hate to say it again--and you guys are going to think I'm stuck in a one-track rut--that's a bad pun.

But La Jolla High sprinter Payton Smith is someone I would pay to see run.

I haven't seen much this spring (no-drive medical situation), and I haven't been to more than a handful of sports events since Jan. 29.

But the junior, who ran at the Mt. SAC Relays April 15 and the Arcadia Invitational the week before, April 8, is elite and worth seeing. She can run. "Burn" is the term I use.

At Mt. SAC, Smith ran the Invitational 400 Meters in 55.45 seconds to place third. She also ran the Invitational 200 Meters in 24.26 seconds, good for seventh place.

But failing to see her run in person, I have had to resort to using photos I took of the last track campaign a year ago. (See above.) I'm whining now. I arranged for a ride to La Jolla's meet at Canyon Hills April 13. Lo and behold, with Mt. SAC two days later--dumbie me, I didn't investigate this far enough, or know track well enough to surmise this would happen--Payton was sitting out.

Thursday, April 13 was a freezing afternoon on the Canyon Hills track set way below the level of the school campus in front of it. I didn't get my photo of "Smitty" running, and I went home disappointed.

But there's hope. If DMV comes through, I could be out driving around any time now, driving all of you people crazy out there on the highways and byways of San Diego. And--I could then go to one of the Vikings' track and field performers' last meets, as the 2023 outdoor season moves to a conclusion.

Throw up a prayer for me.

In addition, as it comes to mind, I am very grateful to my tech wizard friend, Chi, who researched Lightroom (my photo-processing software) and came up with the way to access my photos from last year's La Jolla track meets and show Smith running. Before he did so, I was stymied with a "graying" or "masking" of all the images from May 6, 2022 (Eastern League Finals) and other meets that wouldn't allow me to process the images.