From Brad Travis:
Outdoor season Is finally here! Our first outdoor meet of the year is in the bag and although the cooler temp and precipitation falling from the sky seemed new our kids PR’s on the track did not! We were so proud of how our kids competed tonight amidst some weather adversity. Going down to the track or walking by the team camp I always felt our kids were upbeat and positive. That positivity showed on the track from the 1st event to the last event of the night! Our Girls would start the night off with a big bang! The girls Sprint Med (1-1-2-4) of (Wells, A.Leupold, L.Bolluyt, A.Sinz) ran a fantastic season opening time of 1:50.99. That time put them as a Drake Relays hopeful a week from the cut-off date and currently sitting 15th in the state. Also worthy of noting was Anabel’s 400 Split of 59.1. Considering our 400 school record is 59.06 from 1987 it is safe to say that Anabel might get a crack at it a few times later this season. Then it was onto Carter Trautman who won the 3200 in a nice technical race. Throughout the night kids kept setting PRs despite less than Ideal conditions. The Girls 4×800 was one of those events seeing Addy Peterson and Ella Beck dropping some great PR Splits and giving our team some huge flexibility to our line-ups in future meets! For the first time this Season we got to see our Shuttle Hurdle Relays run. The boys (Hagedorn, Jalas, Barthman, Nebelsick) would finish with a 2nd place finish and now rank 6th in 2A and the Girls (Duvall, E. Sinz, Wassenaar, L.Bolluyt) 1st and 4th in 2A. Perhaps one of the biggest highlights of the Boys night was our D.Med. (Grau, Higgins, Hagedorn, Hungerford). Grau and Higgins ran the 200 legs and gave the baton to Hagedorn in great position. Hagedorn, who last time running a 400 ran a 54.2 would crush his PR with his split of 51.5, and give Hungerford who ran another one of Spirit Lake’s best 800s of 1:56 to finish the relay in 3:34.89 and lock our boys as a very promising Drake Hopeful. The Dmed is currently sitting 8th in the State in a Drake Relay that takes 24 teams. Our team would continue to do great things on the track. One girl that found herself at the top of the podium 3 times tonight was Elanor Sinz! After the Shuttle victory Elanor would Win the 100H and the 400H. That is very exciting considering she has only run the 100H once prior and this was her very first time running the 400H. In fact her 400H time of 70.25 ranks her 5th in 2A! 5th. The Boys also saw an impressive 1st time 400H with Braedin Nebelsick ran 61.07. As just a freshman running for the first time, that is a very nice opener and ranks 5th of all the Freshmen in the entire state in that event. The night would continue on with many fantastic times by all our kids and I hope you look at the attached results page to see all of their wonderful performances. Unfortunately I just can’t name them all in this write up. As a Team the boys would finish 2nd overall. The girls brought it down to the wire in the 4×400. Up by just 1 point going into the 4×400 over Sioux Center, we knew it was going to be very close. Sioux Center is a 3A Powerhouse Girls team and perhaps one of their best events is the 4×400. Sioux Center would lead off one of the best 400 ranked girls in the state giving them a sizable lead over us. But our 4×400 (Peterson, Bruinsma, A.Leupold, A.Sinz) would stay calm and trust in each other and with every lap slowly reel SC back in to see Anabel pass them coming off the last curve and give our girls the team Championship. I hope all of you can come out to watch these kids do many more amazing things next week at our home opener track meet Tuesday, April 14th. We will also be home the 21st of April and it was just recently announced we will be a 2A District site on May 14th.