It was a busy Saturday evening for Grant High School's Shaq Thompson.

The gifted junior, one of the nation's top football recruits, led a patched-together Pacers 4x100 relay team to second place at the 31st annual Meet of Champions track and field showcase at Hughes Stadium.

Thompson then packed up his gear and hustled off to Antelope High's junior prom, where he planned to see girlfriend Ajanae Green.

While meet director Jerry Colman was pleased to have one of the state's best sprinters in the invitational field, he was disappointed Thompson, who runs the second leg in the 4x100, was unable to compete in the 100 and 200 meters because of the conflict.

Thompson is the defending Sac-Joaquin Section Masters champion in the 200 (22.05). He won Division II titles in the 100 (11.00) and 200 (21.87) last season. Thompson also helped lead the Pacers' 4x100 relay team to sixth place in last year's CIF State Meet.

Although De La Salle of Concord edged the Pacers 42.30 to 42.60 Saturday, Thompson wasn't upset. Anchor James Sample did not compete. He was in Seattle visiting the University of Washington, where he will play football on scholarship in the fall.

"We're doing OK," Thompson said. "We've still got to work on little things, like handoffs. Today we had to bring a JV (sophomore Marquis Carter) to run anchor. He did fine, but I think it would have been a different race with James."

Thompson and Sample are back from last year's blazing relay team. They have been joined by senior B.J. Edwards and junior Isiah Taylor.

"We have the speed to match or even better last year's team," Thompson said.

Thompson hopes to retain his 200 Masters championship. The goal for the relay team is to win Masters (the Pacers finished second to Jesuit last year) and finish among the top four in the state.

The bonus regardless of how Grant does: It's helping Thompson, a multifaceted footballer, to get faster and stronger. He says he's finally "100 percent" healthy after a long rehabilitation from a high right-ankle sprain suffered during football.

Like Thompson, Granite Bay's Katie Zingheim had mixed reactions about her performance in the girls pole vault.

The senior easily won the event at 12 feet, 7 inches. But anything lower than 13 feet these days is disappointing for the state leader, who has a best of 13-4.

"I'm just tired of going anything with a 12 in front of it," she said. "I'm just frustrated because I want to be consistently in the 13s."

But the Stanford scholarship signee is doing some midseason tweaking, such as experimenting with a heavier pole. She switched to a bigger pole, borrowed from a Del Oro boys vaulter, on the last of her three unsuccessful attempts to clear a meet-record-tying 13-2.

"It's like a Catch-22," she said. "Moving up poles is good because eventually it will help me get higher. But transitioning between them is tough."

In other meet highlights:

• Despite a strong headwind, Trinity Wilson, the national leader from St. Mary's of Berkeley, won the 100 meter hurdles in 13.92, off her season best of 13.50. She also won the 200 in 24.70.

• National leader Ciarra Brewer of James Logan of Union City won the girls triple jump with a wind-aided leap of 41-9 3/4, second best nationally this season to her mark of 42-9.

• Noel Frazier of California of San Ramon won the boys high jump at 6-11, second best in the state this season.

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