Despite a limited line-up and some athlete fatigue, Sweet Home’s boys finished fourth out of 17 teams and the girls were ninth out of 16 at the Stayton Invitational track meet Saturday, May 10.
Coming the day after the May Week Track Meet (see page 16), coaches weren’t sure what to expect, Head Coach Nathan Whitfield said.
“I was a little worried about it because we’d had May Week the day before so the kids were pretty tired,” he said. “They’re always a little bit dead after the May Week Track Meet. But some kids did really well. We had some big PR’s.
“We didn’t have our full line-up but the guys did really well overall and the same with the girls. They were right there with Newport, points-wise.”
Sophomore Gavin Tyler and senior Jack Simmons were the only event winners for the Huskies, who faced teams ranging in size from 6A Division Glencoe and North Salem to 2A Central Linn and Santiam.
Tyler won the shot with a personal-best throw of 47-9, while Simmons won the javelin with 148-2, just short of the personal best 149-6 he threw the previous week.
Simmons, who only threw the javelin in his previous season of high school track as a junior (topping out at 128-5 in 2024), also ran legs in the 4×100 relay (with Conner Stevens, Kolton Wilmarth and Dillan Davis), which finished fifth (45.55), and the 4×400 relay (with Wilmarth, Ryker Burr and Kasey Kast), which finished second in 3:34.81.
Simmons also tried the 300 hurdles for the first time, finishing fifth in 45.31 – which was fast enough to rank him sixth in the Oregon West Conference.
“Jack Simmons had a great day,” Whitfield said. “I threw him in the 300 hurdles because I thought he’d have potential there, and he definitely does. And Gavin Tyler had a PR in the shot, which he was due for.”
Other scorers for the Husky boys were seniors Wilmarth, fifth in the 100 in 11.83, Kast, fifth in the 400 in 53.20; and Conner Pace, sixth in the discus in a season-best 126-8. Freshman Sam Barringer placed eighth in the jump, finishing at 5-4.
In the boys 3000, freshman Evan Knight turned in the fastest time of the year for the Huskies in his first-ever attempt at that distance on the track, finishing in 10:44.58, a half-step ahead of sophomore teammate Conner Spencer, who PR’d in 10:48.91.
On the girls side, the top finisher of the day was junior McKenzie Miller, who was second in the 3000 in a PR of 11:12.12.
The girls 4×100 relay team of Brooke Elder, Delainie Pratt, Jayla Moore and Loralai Mark were seventh in 53.39, a season’s best; while Noelle Helfrich, Miu Simmons, Selah Wright and Sophia Stock were also seventh in the 4×400, clocking 4:37.57.
It was Wright’s first-ever event on the track in high school, as she specializes in the throws, and normally a thrower, and Simmons, who has concentrated mostly on distance events this year and has only run a high school relay twice before, turned in a season’s best by a half-second for that race.
“That was a bit of a surprise,” Whitfield said of the 4×400 performance.
Wright, a junior, was sixth in the shot (32-7), ahead of teammate Emerson Martineau who broke the 30-foot barrier with a PR of 30-6½. Wright was seventh in the discus with a best effort of 92-0.
Elder, a sophomore, was fifth in the 100 (13.62), senior Peyton Markell was fourth in the javelin (101-5), Mark, a junior, was fifth in the long jump in a personal best of 15-2 and eighth in the high jump (4-2), and Pratt, a junior, was fifth in the pole vault (7-6).
On Monday, May 12., the Huskies hosted Newport for Senior Night, and, as Whitfield put it, “a last chance for some of those JV kids to make a varsity line-up.”
Junior varsity athletes will compete Thursday, May 15, at the Oregon West JV Districts at Stayton, while the varsity competitors will taper in preparation for the Oregon West Conference Championships May 23-24, to be hosted by Philomath.