Dean Guzman of Moorpark has trained for years to surpass the barrier every high jumper dreams of breaking \u2014 7 feet. It happened at the Mt. SAC Relays, where he set a school record and beat the defending state champion, his friend, JJ Harel, of Sherman Oaks Notre Dame.<\/p>\n
His coaches started screaming. \u201cHands up in the air, yelling,\u201d head track coach Christian Dearborn recalled. \u201cIt was special. He was grinning ear to ear.\u201d<\/p>\n
As an eighth grader, Guzman and Harel were teammates on the same track team. Now each will have motivation through the last month of the track season pushing each other to practice harder and soar higher. They will be facing off probably at the Southern Section Masters Meet and state championship.<\/p>\n
Guzman has home-field advantage. The Southern Section finals and Masters Meet are at Moorpark. Harel is finally healthy and starting to pick up training. He used only a six-step run up at Mt. SAC but is now switching to his normal eight steps.<\/p>\n
Prepare for some exciting moments in the competition ahead between Guzman and Harel.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think he\u2019s done yet,\u201d Dearborn said of Guzman going higher.<\/p>\n
This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dean Guzman of Moorpark has trained for years to surpass the barrier every high jumper dreams of breaking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288082,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[4016,123330,63065,123336,123332,123337,123331,48,52,51,47,50,49,63,38584,123334,6310,123338,123335,123333,36418],"class_list":["post-288081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-barrier","tag-dean-guzman","tag-ear","tag-eighth-grader","tag-high-jumper-dean-guzman","tag-home-field-advantage","tag-jj-harel","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-moorpark","tag-mt-sac-relays","tag-prep-talk","tag-same-track-team","tag-southern-section-final","tag-southern-section-masters-meet","tag-state-championship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}