Scott Swanson
As Sweet Home ‘s track and field athletes open their 2023 campaign, with an instrasquad competition on Thursday, March 16, Head Coach Nathan Whitfield is optimistic that the Huskies will continue to improve.
Coming off a fourth-place finish in the Oregon West Conference for the boys last season, seventh for the girls, the Huskies have nearly 70 athletes out this year.
One thing is certain: The team will be young. Six are seniors and all of those are boys.
“We have no senior girls,” Whitfield said. “That’s really surprising, but it’s not a bad thing. It just means we’re only going to get bigger and better next year. We’re still rebuilding a little bit, but we’re certainly looking a lot better, back to how we were pre-COVID time.”
The Huskies have some history to overcome.
Sweet Home’s boys finished second in 2018, 2015 and 2014, the last times they threatened to win the district. Not counting the 2020 season lost to COVID, it’s been 11 years since the boys won state and district titles. The girls were district runner-ups in 2011 and 2012 and placed third in state in 2010. Husky girls have not finished higher than fifth in the district since then.
Whitfield is optimistic that he’s got numbers and talent to start making a difference.
“We have a lot of returners who can do some big things,” he said. “We’ll definitely be a lot more competitive.”
One of the returnees with promise is, of course, senior Mason Lopez, who has won state titles in the javelin in both of the last two years, finishing fifth last year after a seventh-place medal in 2021, his sophomore year.
Back also are three of the four members of last year’s state-qualifying 4×100 relay team – sophomore Conner Stevens, and seniors Dakota Seiber and Taevon James. Stevens was the top performer in the 100 for the boys (11.85) and James was fastest for the Huskies in the 200 (24.33).
“With those three guys we should do pretty well,” Whitfield said.
Stevens and James were fourth and fifth, respectively, in last year’s districts, and the coach said he expects them to provide a solid base for this year’s sprints.
Lopez did well last year in the 300 hurdles, finishing fourth in the district finals, and Whitfield said the senior could be plugged in just about anywhere in the lineup.
“He can do a lot of different things.”
One change this year is that the Huskies should have hurdlers on both the boys and girls sides, he said – an area in which they were not well-stocked last year.
Distance coach Dave Martin, who brings 40 years of college and high school expertise to the track, will have a deeper crew than he did last year, his first after returning to the Sweet Home program from Oregon Institutes of Technology.
Martin has some runners who have gained experience from his cross-country program, which he essentially built from scratch last fall, in freshman McKenzie Miller, who was 10th in the district, along with junior Rylee Markell, and sophomores Natiyah Walters-Koenig and Peyton Markell on the girls side, and freshman Jim Morgan, who was the Huskies’ top finisher at districts in cross-country. Also on the roster is sophomore Kasey Kast, who didn’t run cross-country in the fall but was one of the Huskies’ top middle-distance performers as a freshman early in the 2022 season.
In addition to Lopez, back in the throws for the boys are sophomores Dylan Sharp, who was Sweet Home’s third-best shot performer last year (35-5), and Jon Hart, who was third-best in the discus (95-11). Also back is senior Evan Jensen, who steadily improved in the javelin last year, posting a best of 134-5½.
Junior Ryker Hartsook returns for the boys in the long jump, in which he was second-best on the team with a best of 17-4.
On the girls side, last year’s team MVP Ivy Dewitte is not on the roster for her junior year, but junior Lydia Wright returns, as does sophomore Amelia Sullens, both among the top performers among the underclassmen in the sprints and middle distances last year.
Wright, who competed in seven different events last year and a top performer in most, like Lopez can be of value almost across the board, Whitfield noted.
Jess Martineau also returns as the No. 2 performer, behind the graduated Kami Hart, in the weight events last year as a freshman, with a throw of 25-0 in the shot and 65-11 in the discus.
Junior Kallie Maas is back after leading the team in the javelin with a throw of 83-10 last year.
So is Beatrice Reeve, who was the top long jumper for the girls as a freshman (13-9 ¾).
Upperclassmen who round out the roster are seniors Cooper McKinnon and Tomas Stafford, and juniors Nathan Aker, Deacon Bachand, Zianna Duncan, Faith Johnson, Max Klumph, Cadence Makinson, Kaylynn Mamac, Colin Nicholson, Eli Olson, Garrett Peake, Emily Rasmussen, Stephanie Saultz, Kyle Sieminski and Kaylene Zajic.
Sophomores are Chase Cameron, Tierney Clarno, Brooklyn Erickson, Rickey Erickson, Abygail Foss, Gavin Gardner, BlakeLee Jewell, Madison Lytle, Jenaya Mcelhinny, Conner Pace, Laird Pettner, Boden Sayer, Nathan Thompson, Gracie Vaughn and Lillian Wolf.
Whitfield is particularly excited about the 19 incoming freshmen, who have already demonstrated that they can perform, he said.
“We’ve got a bunch of freshmen that look like they have a lot potential,” he said. “It’s kind of exciting.”
Freshmen rounding out the team are: Dillan Davis, Ella Forum, Memphis Gay, James Hearick, Rylie Hollingsworth, Cannon Klumph, Jackson Knight, Loralai Mark, Kylie Melkvik, Emma Pangle, Kyle Petrait, Kyle Porter, Delainie Pratt, Manuel Rivera, Lukas Thompson, Keagan Vogel and Selah Wright.
The coaching staff this year includes 2020 alum Casey Tow, who is taking a break from college competition in the decathlon after two years at the Naval Academy, along with Martin, longtime assistants Ramiro Santana and Randy Whitfield, Debora Walvatne, Andrew McIntyre, and alums Josie (Knight) Macklin, who competed in track at Linfield and Sam Macklin.
Following the intrasquad opener, the Huskies will face off with East Linn Christian and host Central Linn on Wednesday, March 22, followed by the Summit Decathlon/Heptathlon to which, Whitfield said, he hopes to take some Husky athletes. Historically, that competition, which Sweet Home used to host annually, often unveiled talent for the Huskies.
This will be a big year again at Husky Field, with the Meet of Champions on Saturday, April 22, and the district championships scheduled to be hosted by Sweet Home for the second year in a row after Cascade declined to hold the meet on its track.
“They were supposed to hold it at Corban, but it didn’t work out,” Whitfield said. “So we are back here again for districts and that should be fun and exciting.”
As far as the Oregon West Conference competition looks, Whitfield said he expects Philomath to return with a strong girls team after wining the state title, going away, last year over Marist and Cascade.
The boys race, which was dominated by Philomath and Newport last year, may be more competitive, he predicted, though while Newport graduated a lot of its top points producers, the Warriors will be back with seasoned seniors who produced a lot of their points in 2022.