The Tri County Northeast Wolfpack opened its’ track season on Thursday, March 28th at the Tekamah-Herman Relays.
Nonetheless, the Wolfpack with only 2 seniors and over half of the squad being freshmen and sophomores used the day to learn about competing.
It was truly a highly competitive event as the eight-school field consisted of Bishop Neumann, Fremont Bergan, Tekamah-Herman, West Point-Beemer, Stanton, LDNE, Tri County Northeast and Pender.
Arguably, Pender’s girls may be a favorite to win the girls’ Class D championship this year, and Bishop Neumann the Class C championship. Once the initial gun was fired to start the running events, it was apparent that seeing high level competition and being a part of high-level competition was going to be an “eye opener”, but a great learning tool as well.
Scoring for the meet was different that a regular meet, as combined efforts in field events were totaled to place in the meet. The score for any event was scored as 10-8-6-4. Since the Wolfpack did not have a full group of four in any field event, the teams were not able accumulate any team scoring.
Individually though, junior Jackson Belt, a returning state meet high jumper, set a new cooperative high jump mark at 6’. Belt was second individually in the event. Belt’s effort secured four points for the Wolfpack boys. Bryan Isom added 2 points in the 110 hurdles to round out the boy’s team scoring.
The track is where the Wolfpack accumulated their points on the day, and it was not easy.
The girls’ team were able to place only 4 relays out of 9 events, while the boys’ team could not crack the top four in any event.
The four events that won awards for girls were the 4X100 relay, Sprint Medley, 4X200 relay and Mid Distance Medley.
The sprint medley (100-100-200-400) team of Kiya Tornez, Rachael Bousquet, Bre Millard and Jayda Stallbaum placed first in the event with a time of 2:07.40. The Wolfpack girls posted a second-place finish in the 4X100 relay of Shantel Miller, Kiya Tornez, Anna Rose, and Bre Millard came in with a time of 53.35, missing the cooperative record by .01 second. That same quartet ran a spirited race for runner-up in the 4X200 relay with a time of 1:56.04. The mid-distance relay (200-200-400-800) came in fourth. The team of Anna Rose, Shantel Miller, Joslyn Mackling and Alejandra Hermosillo posted a time of 5:02.13.
Team Scoring GIRLS: Bishop Neumann 102, Pender 74, West Point-Beemer 64, Archbishop Bergan 42, Tri County Northeast 30, Stanton 28, Tekamah-Herman 24.
Team Scoring BOYS: Bishop Neumann 108, West Point-Beemer 78, Archbishop Bergan 74, Stanton 34, Pender 26, Tekamah-Herman 24, LDNE 14, Tri County Northeast 6.
Coaches Comments:
“The level of talent at this meet was very high. The team performed well and did not disappoint us with their efforts.
A track meet like this sends a message that getting better every day will be important to everyone. Today also allowed the coaching staff to start formulating a more concrete idea about how the talent on this team may be used for the upcoming meets in preparation for the end of the season. To the athletes, we did some good things today that did not win a place, but the energy was good. Remember that you all are a work in progress, and you all need to step up and continue to work for improvement. Good Job Team.”