Sweet Home has athletes going to the state track and field championships in four events this Friday and Saturday, at Hayward Field in Eugene, following a fourth-place finish for the boys in the Oregon West Conference championships hosted by Sweet Home at Husky field last weekend.
The boys finished fourth as a team, while the girls were sixth as Philomath swept both the boys and girls titles.
Senior Mason Lopez will return to state in the javelin for the third year in a row, and junior Nathan Aker and sophomore Kasey Kast will compete in the shot and the 800 respectively.
The other qualifiers were the boys 4×100 relay team of Conner Stevens, Dakota Seiber, Von James and Chase Cameron qualified with a second-place finish in 44.46, well under the time of 45.80 run by last year’s team, which included Stevens, Seiber and James, to qualify.
“We did really great,” Coach Nathan Whitfield said. “The kids showed up and competed. We had 41 (personal bests) which, looking back at the past two years, normally we’ve averaged closer to the low 20s. So we almost doubled the amount of PRs that we have at the district meet.”
Aker got things off to a good start for the boys with a district title in the shot. Aker, in his first year of high school track, bested the field with a foot-and-a-half PR of 44-9 ¾, nearly 10 feet beyond his first attempt of 35-3 in the first competition of the season.
“That was exciting,” Whitfield said. “I knew he PR’d but then he ended up winning. That was a wonderful thing.”
Kast turned in a big performance Saturday with a late move down the home stretch in the 800 to clinch second place with a big three-second PR of 2:04.68.
“Kasey had a great 800,” Whitfield said. “It was real tough competition and everyone was real tight and he ran a smart race and ended up going to state because of it.”
The boys relay, he noted, “did really well” in qualifying for the second year in a row.
“They still have a little bit of room to improve,” Whitfield added.
Lopez was the high points scorer for Sweet Home, placing second in the javelin and just missing qualifying for state in the 110 hurdles and 300 hurdles, taking third in the 110 (16.26) after posting a personal best of 16.11 the previous day in the prelims to take second. He moved up to third in the 300 with another PR (43.10) Saturday, but didn’t make the automatic qualifier in either event. The top two finishers automatically qualify for state.
“Mason had a rough day in the javelin but his hurdles, he did amazing,” Whitfield said. “He was four-hundredths of a second off in the 110s from going to state with his finals time. His prelims time would have had him in state.”
Other top finishers for the Huskies Friday were James, who was third in the 200 (23.80) and fourth in the triple jump, and senior Tomas Stafford, fourth in the discus. Sieber was fourth in the 200.
Junior Kyle Sieminski was also close in the 400, finishing third in 53.36.
Both posted PRs – James with a leap of 37-6½ in his third competition in the triple, and Stafford with a personal best of 126-1.
On the girls side, freshman Mckenzie Miller was the high points scorer for the Huskies, finishing fourth in both the 1500 (5:21.53) and the 3000, her third attempt at the latter, in which she posted a nearly 30-second PR of 11:38.99, a minute faster than her first run at that distance a month previously.
“Mckenzie had a great race,” Whitfield said. “That was a big PR.”
On the girls side, sophomore Peyton Markell took third in the javelin with an eight-foot PR of 97-4.
“Peyton did a great job in the javelin,” Whitfield said. ” She almost got the wildcard – I want to say she was the next one up looking at it, maybe the third one. But she did really great there.”
Freshman Selah Wright was sixth in the javelin with a personal best of 87-1.
Sophomore Jess Martineau was sixth in the shot and the discus with PRs of 28-8 and 72-7, respectively.
“She had a great day,” Whitfield said. “She PR’d in both and she placed, which she wasn’t supposed to (based on seed marks). And Selah made the finals in all three throws. She PR’d in the javelin and was close in the other two.”
Sophomore Kaylynn Mamac was sixth in the 200, running 29.03 in a race in which none of the finalists PR’d.
Lydia Wright was fifth in the 400, finishing in 1:06.53, and sixth in the 800, posting a personal best of 2:42.09.
In the long jump, freshman Loralai Mark posted a 10-inch personal best to take sixth, jumping 14-10¼.
Sweet Home’s lineup suggests the Huskies are definitely on the rise. Only five of Sweet Home’s placewinners – Lopez, James, Seiber, Stafford and Jake Sieminski – are seniors and only two were juniors – all boys. The Huskies had seven underclassmen boys and 11 girls finish in the top 10 in at least one event, some in multiple events, and eight of those girls and five boys finished with medals.
In the boys 1500, an event that usually includes the league’s top distance runners, freshmen James Hearick and Keagan Vogel were 11th and 12th in the 16-man field, but the only other two freshmen in the event were well behind them. Vogel was seventh in the 3000, with a 17-second PR of 10:49.88.
Freshman Cannon Klumph was seventh in the pole vault, jumping a five-inch PR of 8-5, and 10th in the 300 hurdles, in a three-second personal best of 47.81.
In the 100 hurdles, freshman Delainie Pratt just missed the final in ninth place, behind Cascade ninth-grader Reagan Babb, who ended up seventh in the final. Pratt posted a PR of nearly a second to run 20.19.
The 4A state meet at Hayward Field in Eugene starts at 9 a.m. Friday and at 12:30 p.m. Saturday.
Whitfield said he believes his team can bring home some hardware.
“The cool thing is Aker is the furthest one out in 11th place, but he has room to go up. Kasey, and the four-by-one is sitting in ninth place, so they can move up. Mason’s looking great in the javelin.
Everyone has a chance to come home with medals.”
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