AV’s Smith, Barnslater win two events each
The Lakeville South girls and Eagan boys pushed through some unexpected bad weather to win team championships at the Eagan Wildcat Invitational track and field meet Tuesday.
Lakeville South outdistanced South Suburban Conference rival Eagan by 34 points in the girls meet, while Eagan’s boys finished 39 points ahead of Woodbury. Apple Valley was third in the boys meet and fourth in the girls meet. Burnsville’s boys took fourth place and the Blaze girls team had a seventh-place finish. Co-op teams from Trinity at River Ridge/Unity Catholic were fifth in the girls meet and sixth in the boys meet.
“Between the wind, unexpected rain, and the meet running nearly an hour behind schedule, competing became an experience to learn from as we never know what the weather will hold in the big meets coming over the course of the next month,” said Lakeville South girls head coach Andrew Hilliard.
Field event athletes helped power Lakeville South to victory. The Cougars had four field event winners – Eva Welsch in high jump (4 feet, 10 inches), Autumn Schmidt in pole vault (9-0) and Kate Flicek in shot put (35-10.75) and discus (108-9).
Lakeville South also was strong in relays, with the team of Audrey Schmidtke, Taylor Tetner, Josie Hudson and Claire Vukovics winning the 4x800 in 9 minutes, 48.83 seconds, more than 35 seconds ahead of the second-place team. Lucy Hilliard, Lidia Castro, Hudson and Caitlin Beauchamp won the 4x400 by about 10 seconds, finishing in 4:18.51.
Eagan’s Lilah Bartels won the 1,600 in 5:17.66, about two seconds ahead of Lakeville South’s Vukovics. Also winning for the Wildcat girls were Ava Ligtenberg in the 800 (2:22.80), Josie Seehafer in the 200 (26.45) and Geneva Rasmussen in the triple jump (35-10).
Lydia Vonderhaar, Leah Rudashevsky, Zharia Arnold and Kya Myers of Apple Valley won the girls 4x200 relay in 1:49.84. Burnsville’s Carley LaMotte reached the finish line first in the 400, finishing in 1:01.50.
Mariah Willard of the Trinity/Unity co-op won both girls hurdles races. Her winning times were 15.04 seconds in the 100 hurdles and 47.48 in the 300. Willard, a senior, is defending Class 1A champion in the 300 hurdles and was second in the 100 hurdles at state last year.
Eagan won six events on its way to the boys team championship. Two of them were relays. Tyler Bjorkstrand, Brooklyn Evans, Nicholas Tesdall and Tyler Sperl were first in the 4x100 in 45.08. In the 4x400, Owen Ford, Sperl, Noah Daniel and Blake Koenen won in 3:32.28.
Daniel won the boys 800 in 1:59.28. Ford cleared 6-0 to win the high jump. Jack Kruger took the pole vault with a top effort of 12-0, and Jack Hansen was the discus winner at 138-3.
Apple Valley’s Dwyne Smith Jr. and Quieris Barnslater won two events each at the Wildcat Invitational. Smith won the 100 dash (10.60) and 200 (21.80), in each case just beating out Eagan’s Koenen in a matchup of two of the state’s top sprinters.
Barnslater was the 110 hurdles winner in 15.66 and took the 300 hurdles in 44.08.
Albert Ongwenyi of Burnsville won the boys 400 in 50.94 and was third behind Smith Jr. and Koenen in the 200. Blaze senior Jeremy Sherlock won the long jump at 20-4.5.
Peter Andersen of Trinity/Unity took first in the boys 3,200 in 10:54.50.
Next week athletes from all South Suburban Conference high schools will compete in the same place at the same time when they go to the conference relays at Shakopee West Middle School at 4 p.m. Tuesday, April 30.
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