MOUNT VERNON — The Mount Vernon High School girls dominated Division I competition, while the Clear Fork girls shined among the Division II and Division III teams at the 2009 Mount Vernon Rotary Yellow Jacket Relays held at Yellow Jacket Stadium on Saturday.
Mount Vernon scored 92 points, including four first-place finishes, to earn the overall win in Division I. Northland was second with 82 points. Among Division II and III competitors, Clear Fork swept 12 events and rolled to an easy win (130 points). Ridgewood was second.
Among the boys competitors, Lexington won Division I with 102 points; Ashland and Mount Vernon tied for second with 76. Ridgewood took the Division II and III competition with 87 points; Fredericktown finished second with 82 points.
“It’s been really good,” said Mount Vernon girls coach Pat Gray. “We won almost every distance event and, if we didn’t win, we got second. That includes a lot of the sprint relays we did.
“You have to have a couple of athletes in there and you’ve got to have a couple of girls that really want to get after it. Even if they are not the most talented, they will not give up until they have to hand the baton off,” said Gray.
Like the other schools, Mount Vernon had to spread its talent among the running and field events.
The relays were dominated by a powerful sun and a steady west wind that buffeted tired runners. For Mount Vernon’s Katie Curry, who ran the 4x100, 4x400, sprint medley and 4x200, the biggest obstacle may have come from the wind.
“Sometimes, when you come around the corner, it’s like a brick wall that you hit, but you’ve just got to push through and muscle it. You can’t let it get to your head,” said Curry.
“In the 4x100, our handoffs were really good,” said Mount Vernon’s Danae Rockwell. “Courtney Burke really pulled through. In the shuttle hurdles, we set a record and it was really sweet and everybody three-stepped, so it was really cool.”
Senior Jhazmyn Anderson and Rockwell know what it takes to build a good relay team.
“Strong individuals, really,” said Anderson.
“Each of us are good at specialized things, like Jhaz in the 400,” said Rockwell. “We’re strong individually, so when we put it all into a relay team, we’re really good.”
The wind was a scourge for all throughout the meet.
“Everybody has to face the wind. Everyone has the same disadvantage, so it comes down to who’s the strongest,” said Anderson.
“It really helps to run with the wind, but on the last stretch of the 400, against the wind, you die out there,” said Rockwell.
“We have our goals and our PRs that we are going for, and we can’t control anyone else,” said Clear Fork coach Brittany Bechtel. “We knew we had to run our races, so our goal was to come out today and see how many PRs we could pull out on this beautiful day. We were able to utilize 27 girls and get the depth we needed for the 4’s, 8’s and miles. In past years, our girls had to run back to back to back — no complaining, they always did it. It was nice to give them a break this year and be strong and healthy and not be as tired in all of the events.”
Clear Fork’s team has doubled in size in the past year.
“We have pole vaulting this year — we’ve never had it, so we would attempt to win things on the tracks so we could make up for this event and now, we don’t have have that problem,” said Bechtel.
Clear Fork’s Sarah Johnson and Sadie Hitchman, who were on the 4x100 realy team along with their sisters, were just happy it was finally warm.
“We were up in Wooster a couple of days ago and it was freezing, so it is really good to be in the heat again,” said Johnson. “I am very proud of my team. They are awesome and they really did their best and they do in every race. That’s all we can ask for. We train hard everyday. All our seniors are awesome and we have very good leadership.”
Johnson’s sister, Hannah, provides a special challenge.
“She’s taller than me now, so I’m kind of scared,” said Johnson. “She has the same times as me, so I have to push myself harder and that’s better, overall. All I tell her is, ‘Lead me out. Get me in first and I will finish it up.’”
“The second leg [of the 4x100] we were getting kind of worried, because we were second,” said Hitchman, who was running anchor. “I saw our third runner coming around the curve and she semed to be getting close, so I thought, ‘I really have to go.’ It worked out pretty well. We ran our best time.”
Hitchman and her sister, Sara, are going for PRs and are also going for bragging rights at the dinner table.
“We always try to beat each other. That’s the big thing. We want to run better times than each other,” Sadie said.
Fredericktown Freddies coach Bob Geiger loaded the girls 4x100 and 4x200 with the idea of putting their best forward.
“That was the first time we loaded it up and put all four girls in there together to see how fast we could run and we are really happy with how we did,” said Geiger. “I was pleasantly surprised, but not too surprised. We knew we were fast.”
It was more than an experiment for Geiger and the Freddies.
“We loaded them because they are regular events that we will see all year and we are really happy with the results there,” said Geiger. “This was the first big relay event that we had and we tried to include as many girls as possible. In most of the races, we have a lot of girls running that may not run at the end of the year, but one or two races we load up with the ones that will be running down the road.
“I challenged the girls after a relay meet in Johnstown when they dropped the baton twice and false started once. So, I bought a really big bag of candy and we didn’t drop the baton and we didn’t false start, so they got the candy. If they did one of those things, the coaches were going to eat the candy. They got the candy and that was pretty important to them.”
Kate Newkirk, who ran on the Freddies’ third-place 4x400 team, said Geiger has hit on the right combination.
“We went through a lot of people, putting different combinations together,” said Newkirk. “When you find a group that runs well together, it’s like a family in a way. ... When we run, we all have the same level of confidence, and I think that helps up a lot.”
“We try to do our best every time and see if we can run a better time,” said Newkirk’s teammate, Haley Elkins. “Everyone has their troubles, but you just have to remember that it’s aboout the event. You need to focus on running and forget about the things that happened in school.”
“I was really happy with our girls,” said Highland coach Shawn Wilhelm, who had to make several last-minute changes. “We were missing a couple of kids today and we had to ask a couple of people to step up and run some events that they haven’t run before. It worked out for the most part.”
The multiple relay events did leave some athletes spent by the time field events started. Also, the incessant rains of the last month have left many with little opportunity to practice for field events. Brittany Dawson of East Knox had scant practice time for the high jump.
“It’s hard,” said Dawson. “We haven’t had much practice at all. Our first day was Thursday since we had all the rain. Yesterday was the first day that we could come into Mount Vernon and work on our field events for today.”
Dawson was also in the sprint medley, mid-distance medley and 4x200.
“I’m worn out. I’m ready to relax,” she said. “You’ve got to relax. You have to prepare yourself the night before. Get a lot of sleep. We get up at 6 in the morning. We make sure that everyone is eating good, so we are prepared for our day. ... I thought we did really great today. Our time for the 4x200 wasn’t as good as I thought it would be, but our sprint medley and medley did really great today.”
In the boys DII and DII, Fredericktown’s Isaac Potes, who was All-State in cross country, seemed to catch a slight break from the wind, leading his 4x100 team to a 4:28 finish.
“On the back stretch, when the wind is at our back, you don’t feel it — like there’s no wind,” explained Potes. “Against it, well, it actually wasn’t that bad. I think it died down a little bit during our race and I’m really thankful for it. It’s really nice weather — I’m glad it came.”
The Freddies chief MBC rival, the Johnstown Johnnies boys relay team, was very strong.
“Definitely, we’ve been in competition with Fredericktown all year,” said Johnstown runner Matthew Ault. “We managed to stay in front of them and we’re hoping to keep it that way.”
“It was tough against the wind,” said teammate James Platt, “but we pushed and tried our hardest.”
“We’ve been in intensive training for a couple of months, now,” said Alex Wright of the quartet’s accomplishmants. “This is the first year that we have pushed ourselves to our limits and we have really achieved a lot this year. We’ve gotten real close.”
Anchor Jeremy Hornick, who represented the Johnnies in the state cross country championships last fall, was pleased with the way his team battled the heat, the wind and the Freddies.
“The race was tough,” said Hornick. “The wind was insane — especially around the turn of the last stretch. Overall, we did great. We PR’d 12 seconds better than the last race we ran. We all ran great. It’s a lot more fun running with these guys than running alone. They’re great. We help each other a lot.”
Mount Vernon boys coach Jim Lindsey, who has a small team in 2009, was still trying to figure out how to utilize them at start time.
“This is a tough invitational to put something together,” said Lindsey. “Our distance coaches are probably still working to put some things together. We are definitely trying to find the right combination. The 4x800 is pretty much set in stone with the Gregg brothers and the Vance brothers. We’re just trying to figure out, especially in a relay, how to spread those boys out.”
Thoren Lindsey, part of the second-place distance medley team, knows he doesn’t have to exhaust himself in the early events in order to get the most points for his team.
“Basically, how it’s set up, the events are set up so we don’t have to go all out in every event and we still have good placing. You just give what you have in each event and just try to get refreshed for your next event,” he said.
For state-placing thrower Lucas Ferguson, after some early-season injuries, Saturday was a good step.
“It went pretty good today,” said Ferguson. “In practice, I’ve been starting to see throws in the 180s [in the discus.] Before the end of the season and districts, I should be able to do 185.
“I was hurt through the middle of indoor season,” he continued. “I partially tore a muscle, so it messed with me through the beginning of the season. I couldn’t do much. Now, I am finally starting to get better.”
Coach Rob Wood of Centerburg had a chance to see his young Trojans in 4x400 for the first time.
“They ran a real good time. They didn’t place as high as I wanted them to, but ran a 4:33 today,” he said. “Our times are starting to drop like I want them to. We are still at the highest part of our conditioning, so I still don’t expect the times to drop for a couple of weeks.”
