By Scott Swanson
Of The New Era
Three Sweet Home athletes have signed letters of intent to compete in track and field at the college level.
Lance Hanson signed last week with George Fox, and Kate Hawken and Noah Dinsfriend will run at Lane Community College next year.
Lance Hanson
Hanson said he had already applied to attend George Fox and had received a merit scholarship prior to hearing from Coach John Smith, who got interested after Hanson started clocking fast times at the end of this season.
Hanson signed a letter of intent in a June 4 ceremony held in the school library with his father Charles present.
Hanson anchored the Sweet Home boys to a second-place finish in the 4×400 relay at this year’s state championships and helped them to a surprise fifth-place finish in the 4×100.
He ran a personal-best 52.22 to place fourth in the 400 at the district meet, which dipped under the automatic qualifying time for George Fox in that event, he said.
“They weren’t expecting me to do it till after summer,” Hanson said. “That surprised the coaches and I ended up running a 51-second split in the 4×4. That kind of impressed them as well. That’s when the coach said he was going to sign me.”
Hanson said he got particularly interested in George Fox after fellow Husky Bethany Gingerich went there a year ago.
She told him it would be fun for both of them to compete for the Bruins.
Hanson said he also considered Linfield and Lewis and Clark, both of which compete in the Northwest Conference, but decided George Fox offered “better schooling and they also have better athletics.”
“I was originally thinking of both football and track, but coaches in both sports kind of wanted me to choose one or the other,” he said. “So I decided to choose track because I seem to be better at it and I feel like I have a better chance there than I would on the football team.”
He said he plans to begin workouts this summer and run the open 400 with a goal of making the relay team for the Bruins.
Hanson said he plans to study business administration with the aim of becoming a management analyst.
Kate Hawken
Hawken signed a letter of intent earlier this spring to compete for LCC. She said her path to college had some twists and turns.
She tried track as a freshman, but her season was injury-ridden and she missed a trip to state in the 400 and 4×400 relay with fourth-place finishes in both.
“I switched to softball,” she said. “I kind of got pushed away and felt that track was not for me.”
Softball as a sophomore, though, didn’t go great either, she said, and she started realizing that she did have natural ability in track and field.
As a junior she decided to give track a try again in the middle of the season, competing in both sports. In less than a month of work she’d matched her times from her freshman year and helped the Huskies qualify for and place in state in both relays.
“I just switched back and got really determined,” Hawken said. “(Head Coach) Dakotah (Keys) gave me some things to work on, which helped. I ran some surprising times that really opened doors for me at Lane. They liked my times in junior year when I’d put in two or three weeks before running (at district and state).
She ran a PR of 1:03.51 in the 400 this year at Meet of Champions and came close to breaking 13 seconds in the 100 at the district meet with a 13.03. She also ran 26.97 in the 200 at the district meet, and anchored both relay teams, which both qualified for state.
“Head Coach Bill Steyer was really interested in my 200 time I ran at district in Sisters,” Hawken said.
She plans to work on some academic prerequisites at LCC, then switch to a four-year school, possibly Corban, to pursue a teaching career, she said.
The Titan women repeated their Southern Region Championship results in late May by winning the Northwest Athletic Conference championship, almost doubling second-place Spokane’s 124 points by scoring 240.
The women had 22 scoring athletes, seven first-place finishes, and 22 top-three finishes.
Noah Dinsfriend
Dinsfriend, who signed a letter of intent with the Titans earlier this year, said he’d already planned to attend Lane Community College, to pursue a career as a paramedic.
The athletic part was icing on the cake, he said.
It’s been a good year for Dinsfriend, who won a state championship in the 300 hurdles, running a personal-best 40.01 in prelims, and second in the 110 hurdles, in which he ran 15.54 in the district final. He played a big role in giving the Huskies a fourth-place team finish at state – their first trophy since 2010.
Dinsfriend said “it’s been a dream of mine” to compete in college since he started track as a junior high student, but wasn’t always convinced he’d make it.
That changed during his sophomore year, when he started getting attention from colleges.
“I didn’t get a lot of schools that I wanted,” he said. “I wanted to stay pretty close. Lane has some pretty good track.”
The Titan men repeated their Southern Region Championship results in late May by winning the Northwest Athletic Conference championships, scoring 227.5 points, 72 more points than second-place. The men had 22 scoring athletes, eight first-place finishes and 10 top-three finishes.
Dinsfriend said he looks forward to joining a team with that kind of talent. He said he plans to focus on the hurdles, but could do some multi-event competitions. He has the fourth-highest decathlon score, 4861 points, in Sweet Home history in his first try at that multi-event since seventh grade, when he set a record for being the youngest future Husky to finish all 10 events, scoring 1800 points.
“It ended up being a good coincidence,” he said. “A lot of the athletes I’ve been competing against will be in the same league or competing with me at Lane. At least four or five are on the team.
“I’ve already been talking to athletes who are already on there. They have some good hurdlers. It should be pretty fun.”