Track teams enter home stretch

A five-way meet in Elmira followed by a trip to the 44th annual Centennial Relays gave the Outlaws track teams plenty of competition last week.

The teams showed continued improvement as they move into the home stretch of the season with district competition on May 15.

At Elmira Sisters faced the top teams from the Sky-Em league including Marist and Cottage Grove (CG), along with the host Falcons. Illinois Valley from Southern Oregon rounded out the teams. Sisters gave Marist a run for the money in the team score coming within five points of the Spartans 95 to 90. Illinois Valley was next with 84, followed by CG (68) and Elmira (18).

Highlights of the meet on the boys side included a victory by Hayden Stein in the 200 meters (24.1), his best ever, Benton Urquhart's personal record in the 1,500 (4:21), Mike Calavan's best ever 800 (2:04.6) and Luke Glick's all-time best in the 3,000 (9:34), according to coach Bob Johnson.

"We've got such a great group of sprinters and distance runners that we can compete in every running event from 100 to 3,000 meters," said Johnson.

The girls finished third in the team competition with 70 points behind CG (130) and Marist (95). Elmira finished with 44 points for fourth and Illinois Valley mustered just 15 points for fifth place. Mackenzie Williams stole the show for the girls, lowering her personal best in the 800 to 2:29.4, helping freshman Hayley Palmer lower her best to 2:35.2.

Mackenzie Williams narrowly missed making the finals in the 400, finishing with a tie for the ninth-best time in 1:02.08. Justine Head finished 10th in the javelin with a toss of 107 feet 5.5 inches. Kelsey Neilson placed sixth in the high jump at 5 feet even and was eighth in the triple jump with a fine effort of 34-feet-3.25-inches, which is within five inches of her all-time best.

Max Gruettner got a taste of having to run a preliminary race to qualify for finals and did so in a favorable fashion, coming through with the second best preliminary time of the day (51.37) which was his best ever. He followed later in the evening with nearly identical effort in the final (51.62) to finish third.

"Max is learning a lot and just seems to get stronger and stronger," said Johnson.

Later in the meet he helped the Outlaws foursome including Cory McCaffrey, Mike Calavan, and Lee Elder take second place in the 4x400-meter relay in a season best of 3:30.21.

6A Jesuit was the only team to beat the Outlaws.

McCaffrey continued his impressive long jumping soaring 22-feet-8.75-inches for third place. Parker Bennett got the benefit of a large, fast field to lower his best in the 3,000 meters to 9:30.05. Stein McCaffrey, Gruettner and Stahn finished seventh in the 400-meter relay 44.76, a best for the squad.