Senior Lexy Kauffman led the East Linn Christian girls to a fourth-place trophy at the state 2A Track and Field Championships Friday, May 29, at Hayward Field in Eugene.
But it took a last-minute score from June Cowan in the second-to-last event, the 300 hurdles, to push the Eagles past Portland Christian into the hardware.
It was the ELCA girls’ third straight trophy after placing third the past two years.
“We had a lot of solid performances,” Coach Kellen Peters said.
On the boys side, sophomore Ryder Howard scored 29 points on his own in winning the high jump and the long jump, and placing second in the triple, while anchoring the Eagles to fifth place in the 4×400 relay, just shy of what they needed to trophy.
Howard was named Athlete of the Meet for the boys, only the second ELCA athlete ever to get that honor, after McKenzie Wilson in 2017.
For the girls, Kauffman finished third in all three sprints, 12.93 in the 100, 26.26 in the 200 and a personal best of 58.86 in the 400.
Cowan added more points with a second-place finish in the 100 hurdles (15.74) and was seventh in the 300 hurdles, running 49.14 in the finals after posting a PR of 48.46 in prelims, breaking her own school record.
That seventh-place finish gave the girls the points they needed to trophy, Peters said.
The girls were fourth with 50 points, two points ahead of Portland Christian, and trailing Bandon (98), Enterprise (73) and Delphian (62.5).
“That was the difference-maker,” Peters said of Cowan’s performance. “It came down to a lot of little things that happened, which added up to a trophy.”
The boys finished seventh out of 35 teams with 41 points, out of the trophies but with a higher score than they were predicted.
“Overall, it was a really good meet,” Peters said,
Weston-McEwen won the boys competition with 68 points, ahead of Enterprise (59), Bandon (59.5) and Columbia Christian and Culver, which tied at 44.
“We were three points back,” Peters said. “We were a longshot for a trophy. We were supposed to score 35 points on paper and we ended up with 41.”
The Eagles got off to a good start Thursday with a sixth-place finish in the pole vault by Cole Pennington, who cleared 12-3½ as Bandon’s Noah Brown won with a jump of 14-2.
“That started us on our trajectory,” Peters said. “We had a lot of PR’s on Thursday. We started the meet well.”
Sophomore Ryder Howard delivered a “huge” first jump in the long jump, 22-0¼, to win that event, then followed that up with a win in the high jump on Friday, beating Jacob Crawford of Stanford, for whom that height was a PR, but Howard didn’t have to go higher because he was ahead on misses, 3-2.
He finished second in the triple jump, trailing Lowell junior Jax Norcutt until the final attempt in which Howard jumped 42-11½ to take the lead, but Norcutt came back with a 43-04½, a PR, to win.
Senior Josh Rehart finished third in the 400, running a personal best of 51.37. Rehart was 11th in 200 (23.52).
Rehart, sophomore Jonah Magness, Pennington and Howard combined for fifth in the 4×400 relay in a season’s best 3:33.21.
“(Howard) and Josh kind of pushed us to fifth place because we were in a slow heat,” Peters said.
If the Eagles had been able to get into the top three, they would have had the points they needed to trophy, but they finished 5½ seconds behind winner Culver (3:27.92), which led a tight finish.
The 4×100 relay team of Beckham Kramer, Gabe Talleur, Hank Davidson and Pennington was 10th in 46.16.
Also for the boys, Davidson, a senior, finished 15th in the discus (110-5).
Adding to the girls’ score were the 4×100 relay team of Kaylyn Kauffman, Avery Runyon, June Cowan and Lexy Kauffman, who were fifth in 51.90.
Sophomore Maci Modderman was fifth in the shot (32-4¾) and discus (106-11).
Junior Tessa Salvage finished fifth in the high jump with a PR of 4-9¾, and in the pole vault, senior Svetlana Manner was fourth (8-6) and junior Anna Henry finished in a four-way tie for sixth after clearing 8-3¼, bettering by 5 inches the PR she set at districts the week before.
“Her performance in the pole vault was a huge catalyst for our team,” Peters said. “She just kept going up.”
Although they didn’t score, East Linn also got a big PR from freshman Morgan Lalonde, 10th in the 3000 (11:56.83), who had a 20-second personal best at districts, then followed that up with another 17 seconds at state.
“She ran that whole race pretty much by herself,” Peters said of Lalonde, who caught Grant Union’s Eliza Bailey on the home stretch.
Cowan was 12th in long jump (14-3¼) in an off day; sophomore Ella Stutzman was 12th in the 100 hurdles behind Cowan (17.73), with sophomore Madison Kauffman 14th (18.17), and seniorTatiana Manner qualified for the pole vault, but failed to clear the 7-9¼ opening height.
Lalonde’s sister Daisy, now running for Colorado Mesa University, scored big points for the Eagles last year – she won the 1500 and 3000 last year for East Linn.
“Losing Daisy, we wondered who’s going to come in and replace those points,” Peters said. “It really was a team effort, with Tessa and Lana and June. Really, it was the team scoring points to get to 50.”
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Note: Our story in the May 27 edition about East Linn Christian’s state qualifiers failed to mention that Morgan Lalonde, Ella Stutzman, Madison Kauffman, Tessa Salvage, Svetlana and Tatiana Manner, and Anna Henry were state qualifiers. They were added as wildcard entries on Monday, after our story deadline had passed.
