By: Con Marshall
Both Gering and Scottsbluff had eight first place winners and Chadron had seven at the 29th annual Chadron State College High School Indoor Track and Field Meet on Saturday, March 16.
The meet had 229 participants from seven schools, less than half the usual numbers in both cases, but following the nasty blizzard that struck the region on Wednesday it was something of a wonder that the meet took place at all.
Scottsbluff boys winning events included the Class B defending 100-meter state meet champion and football standout Chris Busby in the 55 dash, and three field events winners. Turner Skow threw the shot put 46-5 to edge Gering’s Garrett M. Conn by three inches for top honors, Cameron Geary triple jumped 40-6 ½ to claim that event and Kevin Price had one of the day’s top marks when he topped 13-6 in the pole vault.
Scottsbluff’s Yara Garcia won a sprint at the meet for the second year in a row. Last year she captured the 400 and this year it was 200. She also was the runner-up in the 55-meter dash.
Three more Scottsbluff girls won field events. Brady Laucomer took the long jump by going 15-10 ¾, two inches farther than her teammate, Mariyah Avila, who was the triple jump winner at 32-10. The third victory went to Beretta Coats in the pole vault.
Laucomer also was third in the 55 meters.
All of Gering’s victories were in boys’ events. Individual winners on the track included Cody Ferguson in the 400, Brett Pszanka in the 800 and Peyton Seiler in the 1600. The Bulldogs’ Garrett W. Conn won the long jump and Kolton Ebbers was the high jump champion, but not before he and James Brunner of Scottsbluff had a “jump off.
Both Ebbers and Brunner initially cleared 6-1, but neither could top 6-2. When the bar was lowered back to 6-1, Ebbers went over it, but Brunner missed. However, Brunner did not have a bad day. He was also third in the long jump and Ebbers placed third in the 55 dash.
Gering won all three of the boys’ relay races. Ferguson anchored both the 4×160 and 4×400 relays. Individual event winners Garrett W. Conn, Pszanka and Seiler also ran on winning relays.
Chadron girls won three individual events and two relays. Dawn Dunbar captured the 55-meter hurdles, True Thorne was the shot put winner and Olivia Reed cleared 5-2 while winning the high jump.
Both Dunbar and Reed ran on the Cardinals’ first place 4×400 relay and Dunbar also was the runner-up in the triple jump while Reed was second in the 400 meters.
Two Chadron boys, Dom Nobiling in the 55-meter hurdles and Nathan Burch in the 3200 meters, won those events.
Two girls from out of state were the meet’s only double winners. Hailey Jones from Moorcroft, Wyo., won both the 400 and 800 meters and Karlee Simmons of Hill City, S.D., ran away with both the 1600 and 3200 meters.
Jones was the Class 2A state champion in both the 800 and 1600 meters and also was the runner-up in the 400 at the 2018 Wyoming State High School Meet while Simmons has lots of company when she runs distances for Hill City. The next four placewinners in the 1600 Saturday were her teammates and the Lady Rangers breezed to victory in the 4×800 relay.
The 200-meter winner was Grayson Osmon of Moorcroft.
The winner among the 41 entries in the girls’ 55-meter dash was Ashlyn Mundell, a phenomenal 6th grader from Casper, Wyo., who ranks among the fastest runners of her age group in the nation. Apparently she’s getting faster.
She was second in the 55 meters at last year’s CSC meet in 7.67 seconds while her winning time this year was 7.44.