Illinois girls state track event-by-event
CHARLESTON, Ill. — Below follows an event-by-event breakdown of Saturday’s second day of competition — in both Classes A and AA — at the state girls track and field meet at O’Brien Stadium on the Eastern Illinois University campus.
Field events
Just three Class A competitors were in contention Saturday, and only one of them — Galva’s Karly Johnston — walked away with a state medal. She couldn’t improve on her discus throw of 121 feet, 9 inches, and her fourth-place standing after Friday’s preliminaries was whittled down to sixth thanks to a couple of throwers surging past her.
“I performed my best and set a school record at sectionals, but I improved all four years here,” Johnston said. “Last year, I’d only had three weeks of the season (due to injury). I didn’t have much of a season, so it was nice to get a medal finally (2008 was her fourth appearance at state).“
Johnston will hang up her throwing shoes and concentrate instead on her softball spikes. She’ll be playing at Illinois Central College of Peoria next year. “It (track) has been a big part of my life and it’s going to be hard (to be without it), but I really think I made the right choice (with softball).“
Kourtnie Janson of AlWood/Cambridge could not duplicate her 5-2 effort in Friday’s high jump preliminaries, bowing out at 5-2 on Saturday to finish 17th. Kewanee’s Macie Huff was six inches short of medaling in the pole vault, tying for 13th place in the pole vault.
3,200 relay
Class A: Knoxville and Annawan/Wethersfield started off on opposite ends of this relay, with the Blue Bullets leading early and the Titans last on — of all legs — ace Natalie Fargher’s leadoff. Knoxville gave over the lead briefly at the end of the first lap, but got it back for a couple of hundred meters during Sydney Wright’s solid second leg. She eventually faded back to third. Annawan/Wethersfield briefly moved up to 10th during Aron Jackson’s leg, but that too went back to 12th.
During the third leg, Knoxville’s Peironnet Block seemed to struggle to hold form, and the Blue Bullets plummeted down to seventh. Meanwhile, under Brooke Buresh’s third leg, the Titans started to make a move, going from last to sixth. That had anchors Shelby Johnson and Shelby Steger both going for fifth place early in the final leg. Johnson eventually fell back to seventh, but later got back up to sixth, with Steger holding off Petersburg PORTA for seventh place.
“We knew there’d be a lot of good teams,” Wright said of the final. “We just had to come out and stay aggressive.”
“They’d always beaten us,” Johnson said of edging Annawan/Wethersfield by .31 seconds. “Once they passed me, and I tried hard to pass her back. We couldn’t be too far behind.“
Leadoff leg Natalie Fargher was angry with her leadoff leg, which led to an early last-place finish, but third leg Brooke Buresh was able to pick her up. “Me and Shelby Steger were dead tired (after the 3,200 relay), and I was very upset, but Brooke is always there to pump us back up. She told me ‘We’re all here because of you,’ and that made me feel better.”
400 relay
Class A: Sherrard got out to a slight lead early, as first two legs Rachel Murray and Sarah Boraas got the lead. Third leg Amy Dowell was able to hold it, but both Rushville-Industry and Illini West were knocking on the door at the exchange to the anchor legs, and both anchors proved that they were just a bit faster than Tigers anchor Lacey Hainline.
Class AA: Flawless hands from leadoff Brittney Hart to Triona Roberts, and a good one between Roberts and third leg Ciara Turner, were huge in Rock Island’s ability to hold off Proviso East and Cahokia for third. The Rocks finished in a school-record 47.95 seconds.
“We worked on it very hard, actually, put a lot of hard work and dedication into it,” Roberts said. “It’s just amazing. Nobody knew about Rock Island and we proved we could do it. Brittney came a long way, she’d been out for a long while.”
And Hart was very pleased indeed with the third-place effort. “Right now, I’m so glad. I’d been out all month (in April) came back at conference and had a great 4x1, a great sectional and I’m glad this is for state. It was the best handoff (between her and Roberts) we had all season. I’m excited to come back (next year) and be a four-year state qualifier.”
100 hurdles
Class A: With two girls falling after the first hurdle, there were a few distractions, and Bloomington Central Catholic’s Alexis Atkins also fell about 85 meters in. Riverdale’s Alexa Allen was not happy at all with her time of 16.03 seconds after finishing fifth at state a year ago, though the time was good for another fifth.
“We ate Chinese food,” Allen said of her Friday night in Charleston. “We had fun, I got my mind off of it. It was better than what I did last year. I’m a little disappointed, though. It was the start; I just couldn’t get low enough. The start was not as good as it could be. I’m going to train more, and more often (next year). I’ll probably stay after practices more.”
Allen edged Sherrard’s Sarah Boraas for fifth place. Boraas finished in 16.11.
100
No local finalists in this race.
800
Class A: Sterling Newman’s Amanda Trancoso told a teammate after last weekend’s Erie Sectional that her favorite event was the 200-meter dash. It took all the sprinter speed that race demands to get her to move from ninth to fifth in the final 200, finishing in 2:17.79.
“My dad really helped me out a lot,” Trancoso said. “The extra weekends and running drills helped. He made me run those extra 200s and it really helped me there (in the 800). Overall, I was 27th (after sectionals) and ninth coming in (to finals), so it (fifth) is a great feeling. Sectionals were pretty devastating, especially not qualifying in the 200, so I used that as an eye-opener to come out and run hard.”
Riverdale’s Kara Howell was out of the medals and running 10th at the 200-to-go mark, but she was able to pass a couple of runners late and wind up in eighth place, with a time of 2:19.89.
“I know that my whole year, I’ve had to rely on my kick a little bit. If I get to the 200, I had to sprint as hard as I could,” Howell said. “I need to get that first quarter (400 meters) sped up.”
800 relay
Class A: Annawan/Wethersfield used a solid first leg from Dani Williams to make the stagger up on Sherrard, which was right next to them in lanes eight and nine. Every one of the Titans picked up their legs much better than in the 3,200 relay, finishing fourth overall in 1:46.64. Sherrard rallied to finish sixth in 1:47.76.
“I like it, though,” Williams said of being on the outside. “You just have to catch that one girl instead of five. I’ve never done any better than fourth (in any relay event during her Wethersfield tenure), but it’s a great honor to get even that. I did as well as I could, so I can’t ask anymore.”
Anchor leg Fargher was asked what the group of Titan relay members would do if they were put into just one relay event.
“We actually just talked about that, how surreal it would be. But to be at a 1A school, you can’t focus on just one event,” Fargher said. “That’s what we have to do, to survive at this level. We have our ups and downs, but even though the team didn’t have its best day overall, we still worked hard.”
“It’s been amazing to work with this group of girls,” Sherrard’s Amy Dowell said. “I’m hoping that we’re up there (team-wise). We’re trying to get as many points as we can. We still have a good team, even though we lost a lot of seniors. We’ll have just about everyone back, and they’re all stepping up.”
300 hurdles
Class A: Boraas finished sixth and Rockridge’s Chelsey Widdop took home seventh place. As they gradually became all season, the pair was just eyelashes apart. On Saturday, Boraas finished in 47.26 seconds, Widdop in 47.35.
“She helped me out so much,” Widdop said of her older sister Ashley, who picked up a couple of medals at O’Brien Stadium and also ran at Monmouth College. “She’s taught me everything I need to learn. She helped me get ready for today, gave me a nice ice bath. I think my start was a lot harder, I came out a lot faster today.”
Class AA: Rock Island’s Ciara Turner, who ran a very solid third leg in the Rocks’ third-place 400 relay, didn’t get her usual explosive start, and it cost her early as the field pulled away at a pace which she has not seen very often this year. She stayed in eighth place for most of the race, finishing in 45.39.
“I feel as though it could have been better. One, it’s hot out here; two, they (the finalists) were just good. I feel good, I medalled, and I’ve got next year,” Turner said. “Stay low. That’s what I learned (Saturday). Which is kind of hard, because I’m short and my stride is not as good as all these people.”
1,600
Class A: Sherrard’s Shelbie Pettie wound up running her only race of the day in this event. It seemed that she never could get untracked in it. She was able to hold eighth through the first leg, and it seemed like she might be able to pick off a couple more runners, but she dropped back to ninth on lap 2. That became 10th on lap 3 and then 11th on the backstretch of the final lap, where she remained, finishing in 5:38.00.
After the race, she collapsed on the track, as she had after her 1,600 preliminary on Friday. This time, though, she did not run Sherrard’s 1,600 relay.
Class AA: Moline’s Aisha Praught had a huge preliminary day on Friday, and skipped her 3,200 heat race early Saturday afternoon to concentrate on this final. The second leg, going around the first curve, was very intense, and she had to struggle to regain her balance. She held fifth through the first lap, surged up fourth, fell back to sixth and eventually seventh with 400 meters to go, where she remained.
“I got hit or pushed two or three times,” Praught said of her second leg. “They (meet officials) were yelling ‘Ease up!’ but it’s just part of it. Everyone was so competitive. Yesterday felt so great, so light, so fast, but today I was just dragging my legs. They felt like wood or something.
“I ran a boys JV mile earlier in the year, I ran 5:10 and a kid I was three seconds faster than usually (Ian Williams) ran a 5:01. My coach told me, he ran a 5:01, you could do that. I said, yeah, I believe it, but I never really did believe it. I never thought that it would become possible. It was the first time I’ve PR’d at state. To drop 11 seconds is more than I could ask for.”
200
Class AA: After the height of winning the 400, Rock Island’s Johnson might have — and naturally so — expected to have a letdown in this race, but she had her best start of the day and surged past three runners in the final 50 meters to finish in 25.19.
1,600 relay
Class A: Annawan/Wethersfield went out well, fighting into sixth during Shelby Steger’s leadoff leg. The Titans dropped back to eighth under the second leg of Aron Jackson, but Brooke Buresh moved the relay into fifth place, which anchor Natalie Fargher was able to hold. Sherrard struggled throughout, staying at the back the whole race. Second leg Allie Munday — pressed into emergency service when Pettie went down — did reasonably well for the time she had to prepare, but couldn’t make up any ground despite fresh legs.
Later, the Titans learned that they were DQ’d in the event, causing Fargher to fall to her knees, sobbing, during a media interview.