Tigers have strong showing at H-10 Southern meet
The Red Oak track and field teams kicked off the outdoor season with strong finishes at the Hawkeye 10 Southern Division meet at separate sites last Tuesday.
Boys
The boys’ team took home fourth at the meet in Clarinda, recording a team score of 52 points. Glenwood won the meet with 145 points, while Clarinda was second and Shenandoah took third.
Red Oak had three wins during the meet, including in the 3,200 when Josh Sunberg won by more than 30 seconds over runner-up Cuentin Gray of Glenwood. Sunberg ran a time of 10:45.82.
Ryan Dyson added to the point total in the race when he finished third with a time of 11:45.52.
Logan LeRette had the other race win when he won the 1,600 with a time of 4:48.46, 10 seconds ahead of runner-up Joe Blake of Shenandoah. Sunberg finished third in the race with a 5:04.28.
Gabe Nelson had the highlight in the field events when he won the high jump, leaping 5’8”. Nelson was two inches above Shenandoah’s Mason Silence.
Rob Vial provided a strong highlight in the 400-meter dash when he took second with a time of 54.98 seconds. Vial was less than a second behind the winner of the race, Logan Roberts (53.37) of Shenandoah.
Dylan Graber had a fifth-place finish in the 200-meter dash when he ran a time of 24.49 seconds. James Fuller of Glenwood won the race with a time of 22.35.
In the relay races, the best finish for Red Oak came in the 4x200 when the team of Graber, Hayden VanMeter, Clay Selberg and Brock Isaacson took second with a time of 1:38.67. Glenwood won the race with a time of 1:32.17.
The Tigers had a pair of fourth-place finishes in the 4x100 and 4x800.
In the 4x100, VanMeter, Graber, Selberg and Isaacson ran a time of 47.83 seconds, three seconds behind the winner of the race, Glenwood.
In the 4x800, Nelson, LeRette, Weston Rolenc and Connor Johnson finished with a time of 9:58.14.
The other points finish for the boys’ team came in the distance medley when VanMeter, Isaacson, Vial and LeRette took fifth with a time of 4:20.62.
The boys team returns to action Tuesday when they compete in the Ram Relays at Glenwood High School. The meet starts at 5 p.m.
They’ll be in action again Friday as they return to Clarinda to compete in the Cardinal Relays.
Girls
The girls’ team meanwhile took fifth with a score of 32 points. Glenwood finished first with 142 points, while Shenandoah took second with 95.
“I like how we competed. We’ve got some rearranging to do,” Red Oak girls track coach Curt Adams said. “I’d like to get everybody healthy and see what we can do.”
The team went without several sprinters during the meet, including freshmen Sierra Athen and Hannah Vial.
“We didn’t have a lot of our best sprinters today,” Adams said. “I’d like to see what we do when we have people healthy, like Sierra Athen.”
Kate Walker had the highlights for the meet with wins in the 400 and 1,500-meter races.
“We’ve got a lot of conditioning to do, but seeing where we’re at, the distance I thought did well,” Adams said.
In the 400-meter dash, Walker won with a time of 1:00.97, nearly three seconds ahead of Devon Bomer of Glenwood. Teammate Nikki Graber was sixth with 1:07.34 and Juhi Boeye was seventh with 1:08.37.
In the 1,500, Walker cruised to an easy win when she won with a time of 5:26.51, 20 seconds ahead of runner-up Jillian Finnegan of Glenwood. Graber was fourth with a time of 5:52.48.
The other noteworthy individual race finish came in the 3,000 when Ashley Brower took fourth with a time of 13:32.12.
The top field event finish came in the discus when Emma Ross took fifth with a throw of 87’5”.
In the relay events, the best finish came in the 4x800 when the team of Boeye, Graber, Paige Shirley and Walker took fourth with a time of 11:23.21.
Red Oak had fifth-place finishes in three relay races (4x200, 4x400 and distance medley). In the 4x200, Sydney Straw, Perla Hernandez, Morgan Akers and Ashley Crouse ran a time of 2:09.03. In the 4x400, it was Graber, Brower, Boeye and Walker running a time of 4:43.10.
The distance medley team of Crouse, Michaela Buntrock, Shirley and Brower ran a time of 5:19.43.
The sprint medley team of Akers, Buntrock, Shirley and Alexis Wingfield took sixth with a time of 2:16.03 and the 4x100 team of Buntrock, Akers, Hailey Fada and Sydney Streicher finished seventh with a time of 59.96.
With Red Oak’s first meet out of the way, Adams felt the team got its early season jitters out and they have a lot more information available to determine where to put people in events.
“Now the fun starts,” he said. “We’re going to have to make some choices with where we want people.”
Red Oak will compete in two meets this week. The first will be Tuesday when they go to Clarinda to compete in the Lady Cardinal Relays. The action starts at 4:30 p.m.
Their next meet will be Thursday as Red Oak hosts its only meet this season.
Teams from the Hawkeye 10, Corner, Pride of Iowa and Western Iowa Conference, including Glenwood, Shenandoah, Stanton, Southwest Valley, Essex and Griswold, will be competing. The meet starts at 5 p.m.