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Marion Local's Tate Hess crosses the finish line ahead of Versailles' Conner Gibson and St. Henry's Harrison Wendel in a record-setting 4x100-meter relay at the Midwest Athletic Conference track and field championships at Cardinal Stadium on Friday.
NEW BREMEN - After snapping a 27-year drought with a Midwest Athletic Conference title last year, the Marion Local boys track team came in Friday as a heavy favorite and lived up to the expectations.
The Flyers beat Minster by 82 points as runaway winners, while the Minster girls won their third straight championship after battling with Versailles much of the day at Cardinal Stadium.
"The nice thing about having the team as strong as it was, it allowed today to really be about those individual performances," Marion coach Kyle Grabowski said. "Last year, everyone had an eye on the score. We were watching the score, we were stalking the score. It could've pressed charges against us. But this year, we saw the athletes more for athletes and what they wanted to accomplish, which was a nice thing to be able to do."
Marion led by 25 points after Tuesday and added five wins on Friday, with Nate Buschur winning the pole vault over teammate Toby Kremer and holding off Coldwater's Jack Riethman and St. Henry's Harrison Wendel for a win in the 200-meter dash, with teammate Carter Jones in fifth.
Jones also ran in the 4x200 relay, which had a narrow lead over Versailles before bungling the final handoff and finishing second. The Flyers bounced back to set a new meet record in the 4x100 with a time of 43.65, then ran 5 1/2 seconds ahead of Versailles to win the 4x400.
"Carter Jones, a junior, picked that thing up and still ran outstanding," Grabowski said of the 4x200, "and it's not surprising, because he's over here finishing fifth in the open 200. But they were mentally strong, they re-collected, and the 4x100, they ran angry."
Marion Local's Wesley Schoen holds off Parkway's Trevor Stearns and teammate Victor Hoelscher in the 400.
Wesley Schoen also won for the Flyers, taking an early lead over Versailles' Tyler Barga in the 400 and holding on the rest of the way. Parkway's Trevor Stearns, who won the 400 at the Mercer County meet and posted the fastest time in prelims, surged past Barga on the homestretch but came up just short of Schoen at the line.
"God bless the competition, because that's what made Wes get out so fast," Grabowski said. "He's like, 'I'm not going to see (Stearns) 'til it's too late, so I've got to go,' and that pushed him to that next level."
The Minster girls, who came in 7 ½ points behind Versailles, cruised to a win in the 4x200 and held off a late charge by the Tigers to claim first in the 4x100. Versailles took a half-point lead after the 300 hurdles, but from then on, the Wildcats pulled away.
"I didn't know how it was going to go," Minster girls coach Jessie Magoto said. "We started off doing pretty well, but when that 4x200 won, the momentum just really picked up. For our 4x200 to win, our 4x100 to win, and our 4x800 won on Tuesday, and then our 4x400, where we just dropped tons of time - they just really got the momentum going and did really well. Today's the first time I really saw them dig down and compete, and that's fun. That's really fun to see."
The Wildcats piled up 43 points over the three longest open races. Maggie Hemmelgarn earned a win in the 1,600, jumping out to a lead after the first two turns and maintaining it from there amid a brief rain shower, and Morgan Ketner finished eighth. In the 3,200, Maria Niekamp and Chaney Cedarleaf took second and third.
Minster's Taylor Roth comes down the closing stretch of her record-setting 800 run on Friday.
In the 800, Taylor Roth took the lead in the backstretch of the first lap and left the field in the dust the rest of the way, finishing eight seconds ahead of teammate Annie Hemmelgarn and breaking the meet record with a time of 2:15.07.
Roth then came back and ran the anchor leg of the 4x400, holding off Versailles' Alexis Magoto to give the Wildcats a 2 1/2-second win with a five-second PR.
"That's the hard thing for all of them, and same for Versailles and the other teams - they're all in individual events, they're running the 800, running the 400, running the 200, and then they're asked to do it again and they're asked to do it again," Coach Magoto said. "I just told them, 'All the other girls have done these races too, and I know that's tough, but I'm asking you to do this again."
Coldwater's Izzy Zahn closes out the win in her record-setting 200-meter run.
Coldwater's Izzy Zahn set the third meet record of the day, resetting her own record in the 200 from Tuesday's prelims with a time of 25.21 and finishing more than a second ahead of Alex Kessen of Delphos St. John's.
"I thought it was really fun," Zahn said. "More competition, so I was really pushed."
Kessen, who Zahn identified as her biggest challenger in the MAC, clipped the Cavaliers' phenom in the 100 despite a late push. Kessen was ahead of Zahn in the prelims 12.73 to 12.78 and won the final 12.73 to 12.75.
Zahn was second behind Magoto in the 400 after another late charge, moving from up from fifth in the homestretch but coming up just short at the line, and despite the record time, she said she would've liked to get out a little faster in the 200 as well.
"I was trying to aim for 24," she said. "Getting out of my blocks … I need to get my feet down fast and get my arms up."
Riethman gave the Cavaliers a win in the boys 100, overtaking Buschur in the final 30 meters.
The Minster boys picked up just one win Friday, but had two pole vaulters earn points and two runners score in the 400, the 800, the 1,600 and the 3,200. Bo Dwenger took second in the 110 hurdles and Max Knapke placed in both hurdle races.
"It's an odd situation that I'm in, because usually we're battling for first place, and if we don't win, I'm upset," Wildcat boys coach Larry Topp said. "I hate to say this, but we probably ran the best meet of our year today. I couldn't be happier with the performances of every one of my kids, they did a great job."
"It's pretty ridiculous," he added of the team's improvement since taking third at the Minster Memorial. "Then, we had a bunch of kids who were not gelling. They were not people who were used to being in the driver's seat of the team, and now they are."
Jack Grieshop was the Wildcats' biggest contributor, winning the 800 and taking second in the 1,600 before running in the third-place 4x400 team. In the 800, he took a narrow lead over Marion's Andrew Pohlman and New Bremen's Patrick Bernhold late in the first lap, and after Bernhold surged into first on the backstretch, Grieshop ran him down and closed strong for a 1 1/2-second win.
Fort Recovery's Trevor Heitkamp leads Minster's Jack Grieshop and New Bremen's Zach Wiedeman in the 1,600.
Running behind Fort Recovery's Trevor Heitkamp in the 1,600, Grieshop briefly fell behind the Cardinals' Zach Wiedeman but reclaimed second place to start the final lap and held off Stucke around the final turn.
"Jack was a spot player - I would put him over here last year and he would do well, or put him over there, but you had to guard against (overextending him)," Topp said. "We don't guard against anything. You put him in, he knows what his job is."
Heitkamp was unstoppable in the distance races. He needed less than half a lap to take a commanding lead in the 1,600, then cruised to a 21-second win over Wiedeman in the 3,200.
"Trevor Heitkamp in the 3,200 - that is a strong field, and he put the field to shame," Grabowski said.
Natalie Brunswick gave the Indian girls a win with a similarly dominant race in the 3,200, finishing 13 seconds ahead of Niekamp and 27 seconds ahead of Cedarleaf in third.
Marion freshman Grace Moeller picked up a win in the girls 100 hurdles and finished third in the 300 hurdles. Sannah Chede gave New Knoxville its best finish on Friday, coming in fourth in the 300 hurdles.
The majority of the local MAC teams move on to the Division III district tournament at Spencerville, with field events and prelims on Wednesday and finals on Friday. Coldwater's girls will head to the Division III district at Ada and the Cavalier boys will compete in the Division II district at Defiance.
