Katrina Axtell leads a group of half milers in the first meet of the season held on the indoor track at University of Wisconsin in Superior. Katrina didn’t win, but ran well.
With only a week and a half of practice— all indoors running the hallways and throwing in the gym—the Viking track team headed to the Proctorsponsored indoor meet at the beautiful indoor track facility at University of Wisconsin in Superior. It’s been a crazy start to the season. We’ve had over 50 kids come to practice, over half of them totally new to the sport. I’m still working to learn all the new names. Most of them are junior high athletes, although we have a nice senior group. This was going to be a tough meet, with Proctor, Superior, Marshall, Virginia, Eveleth, Mesabi East and Mountain Iron providing the competition. Ready or not, here we come!
Field events, throwing and jumping, are particularly hard for us, as we have no throwing rings or jumping pits. Peter Warren and Amber Todd got us off to a great start, however, as both placed 3rd in the long jump, at 16’ 9.5” and 13’ 8” respectively. Shows you the value of hard training and great coaching – we hadn’t worked on jumping yet this season. Amber came back with a fine 11.2-second 55-hurdle race, just out of the medals. Newcomer Abby Sutton, a sophomore, represented us well, throwing the shot 23’ 9” and placing in the middle of the pack.
Amber Todd (left) shows off her long jump form while Ashley Deschampe (above) gets the girl’s sprint medley relay team off to a fine start. Todd finished third overall and the sprint medley team placed second.
As expected, our distance runners scored points for the team. Senior Ailee Larson, looking to return to state, easily controlled the 800-meter dash, winning in 2:37. Sophomore Shelby Ahrendt finished 4th in 2:52. In the mile, 7th grader Matea Acero ran 6:28, good for 4th place, while senior Cheyenne Sorlie just missed placing in 7:12, a big 40-second improvement over last year. We had a target of 5:00 for sophomore Kieran Scannell, who has already been to state twice in cross-country, once in track and once in skiing. He just missed with a 5:01. He had the toughest field of the day, however, finishing 5th just behind four other runners that have also been to state. Ben Seaton and Joey Chmelik had big improvements, both running 5:31.
We expected Peter to lead us in the sprints and he did, placing 3rd in the 200 at 25.8 and tied for 5th at 7.0 in the 55. Seb Schnobrich was our next fastest in 8.3 and 31.2.
Eighth grader Lars Scannell had our best 400 in 70.2, just ahead of Cy Fortunato in 72.6.
We were very interested to see if we had any new girl sprinters, and we weren’t disappointed. Jessica Berg- Collman finished just out of the medals in 8.5 for the 50. Ashley Deschampe was next in 8.7.
Rachel Todd in 8.8, Adrianna Berglund in 9.2, Elizabeth O’Phelan in 9.4, and Michaela Peterson in 12.3. Rachel led us in the 200 in 33.4, with Adrianna running 36.7.
Kara Ramey led the girls in the 400 at 78.8, with Lilly Gruber-Schulz, Kaylee Cronberg and Lauren Thompson all running well in 82.9, 83.9 and 87.9 respectively.
Relays are the most fun in a track meet, and we had a lot of them. Our boys’ 4×800 A team of Levi Axtell, Ben, Darren Waha and Kieran ran 9:51, placing 4th, as Kieran out-leaned an Eveleth sprinter at the line. Our B team of Nate Carlson, Joey, Will Seaton and Kyle Martinson ran 11:34. Our girls’ team of Shelby, Kara, Cheyenne and Ailee was also 4th in 11:34. If I hadn’t told Ailee not to kill herself to catch Marshall and Eveleth as they had a 100-meter head start after the last handoff, we might have finished 2nd, as she almost caught them anyway.
Our girls’ sprint medley relay team of Ashley, Jessica, Amber and Molly Zafft had a great race, placing 2nd in 2:09.
We had five teams in the 4×200, three girls’ and two boys’ teams. The girls’ A team of Amber, Ashley, Molly and Jessica placed 5th in 2:12. The B team of Abby, Lilly, Linden Sutton and Emma Nalezny ran 2:33, and the C team of Emma Olfson, Mel Stoddard, Lauren Thompson and Elizabeth caught them in 2:32. The boys’ A team of Peter, Lars, Seb and Kyle ran 1:58, while the B team of Roman Schnobrich, Sean MacDonell, Dylan Deschampe and Cy ran 2:15.
We closed the meet with six 4×400 teams. Ailee got our A team out to a big lead that Ashley, Molly and Shelby held to the finish in 4:48. Rachel, Kara, Cheyenne and Matea got us a surprise 5th place in 5:22. Our C team of Lauren, Emma O, Mel and Kaylee ran 6:06, while the D team of Katrina, Lilly, Linden and Emma N ran 6:36. Our boys’ A team of Levi, Lars, Ben and Kieran ran 4:33, good for 4th. The B team of Darren, Nate, Joey and Kyle ran 4:47, and the C team of Will, Sean, Roman and Cy ran 5:26.
In team scoring, the girls were 5th and the boys 7th. Not too bad.
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