There will be three area entries in this year’s Drake Relays.
A Newton girls relay and individuals from Prairie City-Monroe and Collins-Maxwell/Baxter will be a part of the annual event at Drake Stadium.
The first area athlete to run on the blue oval will be CMB senior Brady Stover, who qualified for the boys 100-meter dash. Also running Friday morning is the Newton girls’ sprint medley relay team, while Prairie City-Monroe junior Jayci Vos takes part in the girls 400 hurdles Saturday afternoon.
The Cardinal foursome of Liz McVey, Alex Hutchinson, Leela Spencer and Sydney Jenkins were the 24th and final qualifying relay in the sprint medley event.
Newton qualified with a time of 1 minute, 52.76 seconds, which was .01 seconds faster than Central Elkader, and it runs in the first of three heats at 10:13 a.m. Friday.
The Cardinals will be in lane eight. They’ll get to run against Little Hawkeye Conference rival Dallas Center-Grimes, which qualified with the 23rd best time. The Fillies will be in lane one.
CMB’s Stover runs in the 100 at 8:46 a.m. Friday. The Raider senior is making his first trip to the Drake Relays, and his time of 11.11 seconds ranks 31st out of the 32 qualifiers.
Stover runs in lane eight of heat three. Joining Stover in the third heat will be Madrid’s Michael Santi. Stover and Santi could face off against each other at a Class 2A state qualifier in Van Meter later this season.
The 400 hurdles is the hardest individual event to qualify for at the Drake Relays. Vos is one of just eight qualifiers in the event. Her 1:05.64 was the eighth qualifying time, and she’ll run in lane eight at 1:25 p.m. Saturday.
The fastest qualifying time was 1:03.89. Vos’ time kept multiple-time state and Drake Relays distance champion Stephanie Jenks of Linn-Mar out of the race. Jenks ended up with the ninth best qualifying time in the state.
Vos is the first female individual qualifier at PCM since Bridget Martin took over the program four seasons ago.
Contact Troy Hyde at
641-792-3121 ext. 6536 or thyde@newtondailynews.com