Southampton's Kyla Cerullo Breaks Another School Record, This Time in the 200-Meter Dash

Kyla Cerullo has done it again.

Nearly a year after breaking Anyse Bonner’s 2007 school record of 7.64 seconds in the 55-meter dash, resetting it to 7.55 seconds, the Southampton senior has taken down an even lengthier school record. At the Hispanic Games on Saturday, Cerullo had one shot at breaking Jackie Rodriguez’s 2006 school record of 27.78 seconds in the 200-meter dash, and she did it. Cerullo crossed the finish line in 27.52 seconds, securing yet another record and firmly planting herself in the Southampton record books.

The 200-meter dash is typically run outdoors during the spring, or at the college level, but the Hispanic Games is one of the rare meets during the winter indoor season that offers such a distance. When Jackie Rodriguez set the school record in 2006, it was also at the Hispanic Games.

While Cerullo has seemed to become accustomed to breaking school records, it wasn’t all that long ago that it was believed that she may not even run. As fate would have it, Cerullo was running at the Armory Track and Field Center, just over a block away from where she underwent heart surgery at New York-Presbyterian Columbia University in August 2016. When Cerullo was 3 years old, doctors found her to have an off heartbeat but couldn’t pinpoint the reason until surgery. It was then doctors found and removed an extra artery that was attached to her heart which was pumping more blood through it than normal, causing an ectopic heartbeat, a type of arrhythmia, or irregular heartbeat, where the heart contracts, or beats, too soon.

Cerullo admitted that she woke up Saturday morning not feeling the greatest, coming down with possibly some sort of illness, but she pushed herself to go to the meet anyway. After admittedly not running all that great in the 55-meter dash, or with the 4x200-meter relay team, she put all of her focus on the 200.

The 200 went off with a running start, something different for Cerullo that she said she’s never experienced before.

“They had the first girl in the heat before me go and so I had no time to think, it was a really quick start,” she said. “They just went, ‘On your mark,’ and we all went down, and all I was thinking was to get out fast, keep your feet cringed and drive immediately. So the first 50 meters I had the lead and I held it until the last curve. I guess there I may have slowed down a little bit, but once I crossed the finish line I almost immediately knew I beat the record. I didn’t want to get too excited because the time hadn’t come up yet, but once I went over to my mom and she said, ‘you did it,’ oh my gosh, I was screaming with all of my friends who were waiting for me to take pictures next to the scoreboard that had my time on it.”

It was yet again an emotional moment for Amy Cerullo, Kyla’s mother.

“Unbelievable,” she said. “I even took a selfie in front of the hospital on the way to the Armory and said, the last time I was here I was thinking she may never compete in a sport again, and now she’s breaking school records. It’s pretty awesome. It was a teary-eyed moment for me, I was holding back the tears because for my daughter to even in be in the presence of some of these athletes was surreal. The entire day felt awesome.

“But until you go through something like that with your kid, a potential life-threatening or life-altering change, I don’t miss a meet now,” she said. “I don’t miss any performance she has because of that reason that you never know what could have been.”

Southampton head coach Eddie Arnold said Kyla had built herself up to this point in the season and the timing was right for the record to be broken.

“I told her if you’re locked in, you’re going to break that school record,” he said. “It’s yours if you want it. She wanted it. I know she wanted it. Mission complete. We had been talking about this for a long time and we planned to do certain things and that this was part of our goals. Records are made to be broken. Any time a record is broken, as a coach, it’s like the changing of the guard or passing of the torch. Jackie Rodriguez is the mother of two children now, and I think she’d be happy that her record was broken. Amanda Mannino was close to breaking two years ago, and I know she still talks about it, so it’s important to the girls.”

Now that she’s accomplished her goal in the 200, Cerullo said her focus this season will be in the 55, in which she’s already tied her own school record this season and will be looking to improve upon it in the coming weeks.

“It feels great knowing that it took 18 years to break this record. It’s certainly an accomplishment I can say I’m proud of,” she said.

The Southampton girls had a couple of other standout performances at the Hispanic Games. Emma D’Italia placed 12th in the varsity bronze 55-meter dash in a personal best 8.36 seconds. Katie Terry (8.39 seconds), Sara Calderon-Buitrago (8.72 seconds) and Riley Cameron (9.10 seconds) all ran personal bests in the same race. Keira Squires ran the varsity silver 55 and finished in a personal best 8.31 seconds. Livia Lombardi-Benvenuto placed sixth in the high jump after clearing a season’s best 5 feet. Sloane Edson leaped a season’s best 31 feet 1 inch in the triple jump and Cameron Kieffer leaped a personal best, 30 feet 3 ½ inches.