Sweet Home sent two athletes to the third annual Meet of Champions Oregon and Washington dual at McKenzie Stadium in Vancouver Washington Sunday.
This meet tries to bring the best prep athletes from Oregon and Washington together after their respective state meets in a dual meet format. A coaches committee in each state picks athletes based on their season best marks and times along with their performance at the state meet.
“This meet has some pretty impressive marks and times as records, despite this being the third year,” Coach Billy Snow said. “That’s not surprising since it brings pretty much the best athletes together for a friendly competition.”
For a variety of reasons, this is the first time we have sent any athletes to this meet. Matt Slauson competed in both the shot put and the discus. Paris Ramsey competed in the 100M and 200M sprints.
Slauson opened up in the discus with a 152-00 but struggled the rest of the way.
Despite that, Slauson’s throw is his second best ever and just off his school record of 153-08 set at the state meet. The winner of the event was from Washington and threw over 183-00.
Slauson came back strong in the shot put however. His best put of the day came on his last throw and went 54-08.25 which placed him fourth on the day. This is an improvement on Slauson’s school record of 53-08 that he set at the District meet this past season.
Ramsey ran two solid races, his first steps on the track since the state meet. In the 100M, Paris closed fast and went 11.10a to place second to Chancellor Young, the state champion from Washington who ran 10.99a.
“In the 200M, Ramsey got a lousy draw of the lanes and ended up in lane one which was really tight for him,” Coach Snow said. “He never got into stride until he came off the corner and was closing in on the field all the way to the line.”
Young again nipped Ramsey, 22.05 to 22.07. Ramsey’s time is faster than he ran to win the state meet and Young’s time was a new meet record.
For the meet, the Washington boy’s squad easily topped the Oregon squad. On the girls side, the story was the same but the score was a lot closer than the boys.