Although he didn’t make it to sections, Kyle Martinson (above) ran his best time of the year in the 110 high hurdles at subsections and Kara Ramey (right), relay stick in hand, helped the 4×400 relay to a time of 4:32 and a fifth place finish. The Vikings will send 8 kids to the section meet and if they finish in the top two, they will advance to the state meet. Last year Kieran Scannnell (2 mile) and Ailee Larson (800 meters) qualified for state. Both hope to return this year and both should have a good chance of placing.
Last year, only our top three athletes qualified for the section finals out of subsection. This year we had higher expectations. Ailee Larson, Kieran Scannell and Peter Warren were sure bets to repeat last year’s success, so was first year girls’ sprinter Molly Zafft. In addition, either our girls’ 4×400 or 4×200 relay had a chance of qualifying with a top 7 individual place or top 4 relay place. We did a little better than that.
Finally, we had a “normal” beautiful day for track at UMD – sunny, a slight breeze and temperatures in the 60s. It is one of the most enjoyable experiences in sports – being out in the sunshine (many of us forgot our sunscreen) watching a constantly changing 3-ring sports circus of 8 individual running events, 4 relays, 4 jumping events and 2 throwing events. This particular circus had 15 teams of over 300 athletes.
Running the high hurdle preliminary heats (unlike most meets, you had to qualify for the finals in the short sprints to place at subsection), bad luck continued to haunt senior Amber Todd. Déjà vu to last week at conference championships, she was out well, leading her heat with a great chance to make the meet finals, when she fell over the last hurdle. And like last week, younger sister Rachel set a big PR of 18.5, qualified for the finals and placed 6th, our first big surprise of the meet. Amber came back in the long jump to give us our second surprise qualifier, placing 6th in 13’ 8.5”.
Peter had a PR qualifier of 11.75 in the 100 dash and came back to place 5th in the finals, our second section qualifier. He was also successful in the 200, placing 3rd in 24.09 with his normal strong finish just nipping the 4th place runner. Molly Zafft easily qualified for the girls’ 200 final, and came back to place 3rd in a 28.01 PR. We were up to 4 qualifiers.
Our surest bets in the meet were Ailee and Kieran—both went to state last year. With her reputation preceding her, Ailee was stuck leading the 2-lap, ½-mile race as no one was willing to take the lead. No problem, she took it out steady, dropped all but one competitor, turned on her big finishing kick and won going away in 2:24, the best time in northern Minnesota this year. Kieran had a complicated strategy. With two very tough competitors from Proctor likely to split up into the mile and 2-mile and old nemesis Jackson Lindquist of Esko likely to run the 2-mile, Kieran entered both long runs with a plan/hope of getting to state in either or both of the events. He easily cruised to 2nd in the mile, running 4:46, saving energy for the 2-mile, which was run 3 hours later. In the 2-mile, Matt Welch of Proctor, Jackson and Kieran quickly separated from the pack. Then a drawnout game of cat and mouse ensued. Jackson took the lead and pushed a hard pace; Matt spurted to a very fast tempo then slower. Meanwhile Kieran covered all the moves. As the gun sounded for the last lap, Kieran surprisingly bolted to the lead, opening a 15-yard gap (he said the noise gave him a surge of adrenalin). Jackson dropped back, while Matt slowly gained back the lost ground, just catching him at the line. Kieran’s 2nd place time of 9:59.8 was PR, and just 2 seconds off Brian Larsen’s CCHS school record.
Placing 3rd in the 4×200 relay were (L-R) Amber Todd, Ailee Larson, Jessica Berg-Collman and Molly Zafft.
Our girls’ 4×200 team of Molly, Ailee, Amber, and Jessica Collman gave us our first girls’ relay qualifier in recent years, placing 3rd in 1:55.6. Our final qualifier came in the girls’ 2-mile. Seventhgrader Matea Acero wasn’t real happy to return to the 2 after running the mile last week. But it paid off as she started slowly and gradually worked her way through the field, moving up to 7th place in a PR 13:23.
The rest of our team closed the season at subsection, many with season best, PR performances. Jessica continued her improvement with a 14.4 in the 100-meter dash. Cy Fortunato and Andy Farley both PR’d in the 100 and 200 at 13.7, 13.8, 28.4 and 28.8 respectively. Ava McMillan ran the 400 for the first time in a fine 71.1, while Lily Gruber-Schultz and Emma Olfson ran bests of 78.1 and 78.5. Bjorn Johnson improved his 400 time to 62.9. Senior Katrina Axtell improved to a best of 3:18 in the half mile while Lauren Thompson ran it for the first time in 3:29. Nate Carlson and Will Seaton improved their ½-mile times to 2:34 and 2:40 respectively. Shelby Ahrendt took her first try at the mile and ran a good 6:20 while Cheyenne Sorlie continued her never-ending improvement to a 6:24. Daniel Ahrendt won the duel with Ben Seaton in the mile 5:36 to 5:42. Audrey Summers was close to placing in the 2-mile in 14:09, while Joey Chmelik broke 12 minutes for the first time in 11:44. Kyle Martinson continued to improve in the 110 high hurdles, running 21.0, as did Mara MacDonell in the 300 low hurdles with a 58.6. Mara and Mel Stoddard had bests in the triple jump of 27’ 6” and 22’ 1” respectively, as did Kyle with a 31’ 1” effort.
Our throwers, helped by the presence of Kerri Bilben, notched a lot of personal bests. Abby Sutton threw the discus 71’ 4” while Michaela Peterson had a good first time throw of 42’ 10”. They did well in the shot put too, 23’ 6” and 15’ 10”. Levi Axtell got his discus throw back up over 90 feet with a 93’ 8” effort, while Dylan Deschampe broke 20 feet in the shot by 6”. Relay specialist senior Sebastian Schnobrich led our boys’ sprint relays, while sophomore Kara Ramey ran well on our girls’ 4×400 relay that just missed qualifying with a 4:32 5th place finish.
Now it is on to the Section finals, where only the top two individuals and top relay team move on to state—a very daunting task when 30 teams of over 600 athletes ran at the two subsections. Go Vikings!
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