Lynnville-Sully girls have historic state track meet

DES MOINES — History was made for the Lynnville-Sully High girls’ track program during the three-day run of the 2018 Iowa High School State Track and Field Championships.

On Saturday, the Hawk girls’ shuttle hurdle relay four of seniors Mariah Vos and Camryn Russell and sophomores Abby Gruver and Mallory Loftus captured the silver medal. It was the highest at state in any event for the girls in school history.

Lynnville-Sully ran its final heat in 1 minute, 08.69 seconds, which was almost a second faster than its preliminary time from Thursday. The shuttle hurdle relay final had four teams from the South Iowa Cedar League in it — Sigourney won the title with a 1:07.21 followed by the Hawks then BGM was fifth and North Mahaska was seventh.

Russell and Vos were emotional following the relay. Russell, Loftus and Gruver were on the shuttle hurdle team which took sixth at the 2017 state meet.

“It was really good and we all ran to the best of our abilities,” Vos said. “It was a great year running with these girls and I’m really going to miss them next year.”

“My leg went well and we all did our best today. We’re pretty happy with it,” Russell said. “It’s emotional as a senior to know it is the final time we four will run this race together.”

The Hawk girls compiled 17 points, which placed them 13th in the Class 1A team standings at the state meet. Lynnville-Sully had its highest team finish in the 11 years under head coach Darin Arkema. Danville won the 2018 Class 1A team championship with 56 points.

“Having one of the highest, if not the highest, team scores and places at state in school history is certainly the way to put an exclamation point on a tremendous season from our girls,” Arkema said. “It just capped off the hard work and efforts by all of our team this season. Our state qualifiers represented their team, school, and community well.”

Lynnville-Sully had three other medal finishes — two of them came in the other hurdle events at state. Loftus qualified for the 100 hurdle final with the eighth-fastest time of 16.38 seconds on Friday. She ran a personal-best 16.00 seconds to earn the fourth-place medal.

Gruver, who was 12th in the 400 hurdles as a freshman, broke her own L-S record with a 1:08.27 on Friday at the state meet. She snared the seventh-place medal while Vos had a personal-best time of 1:09.61 for 11th.

The Hawk foursome of sophomore Kaleah Ehresman, Russell, freshman Korinne Jansen and senior Jataya Meyer staged the final medal catch for the Hawks. After posting a season’s-best time of 52.04 seconds in Friday’s preliminaries for the eighth-place slot in the finals, the Hawks were on the track Saturday for the 4x100 relay final.

Lynnville-Sully’s 4x100 relay team carried the seventh-place medal out of Drake Stadium. The Hawks combined for a 52.80 time.

On Friday, the Hawk 4x400 relay team of freshman Caitlin Alberts, Loftus, junior Carson Fisk and Gruver broke a school record, which was set in 1999, with a 4:13.23 time in the preliminaries. The Hawks missed qualifying for the finals by .06, finishing ninth.

The 4x200 relay team of Jansen, Russell, Fisk and Meyer placed 11th in 1:50.23 on Friday. In Saturday’s sprint medley relay finals, the Hawk team of Ehresman, Meyer, Fisk and Alberts finished 17th in 1:56.89.

Lynnville-Sully’s shuttle hurdle relay team was in the second of the two final heats and a team in the first heat a posted a 1:08-plus to win the heat, but was disqualified. The Hawks didn’t know that fact until after their heat was complete.

The Hawks’ relay was led off by Gruver. She said the team ran pretty well for being the last time the four ran together and they worked well together all year.

“We all ran good splits and got back into the 1:08s. Sigourney is always good competition to push ourselves against,” Loftus said as the two SICL teams were in the same final heat.

Gruver said her 400 hurdle final went well.

“Overall, I was happy with my race and I broke my own school record,” Gruver said. “I’ve pushed myself all year to get back here, It really helps to have great teammates who want to help you improved.”

For Vos the 400 hurdle race made her nervous because she hadn’t been running them a lot toward the end of the season because of the L-S senior trip.

“I went out on Friday and gave it all I had and ended up getting my personal best by two seconds,”

Vos said. “That was fun and it was good to come back to the state meet after not coming last year. I finished it off by doing my best.”

Loftus said she was a bit worried going into the 100 hurdle final after qualifying eighth. She said she was shooting to place above there and she did — fourth.

“I had people in the final race I had raced before and I knew I could push myself against them,” Loftus said. “It’s awesome to get a state medal.”

The Lynnville-Sully 4x100 team had to wait along with everyone else in a two-hour severe weather delay on Saturday afternoon. By the time they were back on the track, the rain had stopped and they had clear sailing on the Drake Stadium track.

“The 4x100 is a fun race to run because it’s the fastest one you can run,” Meyer said after anchoring the relay team to it’s seventh-place finish. “I love running with the girls I do especially Camryn, who has always been a great leader in my life. It’s just an awesome time out there.”

Russell wasn’t as emotional following the final race of her high school career.

“We have graduation tonight and my mind is on that right now,” Russell said. “We did what we needed to do today and it’s been a great season.”

For Ehresman and Jansen, it was a great experience to compete on the 4x100 and other relays at state. Ehresman led off the 4x100 an Jansen ran the third leg.

“It’s a lot of pressure as the first one with the baton and worrying about not false starting,” Ehresman said. “I was confident about holding onto the baton and getting out of the blocks well.”

“This race was really competitive and we had a lot great people to compete against which was good for us,” Jansen said. “It’s amazing to get a state medal and run with the two seniors.”

Contact Jocelyn Sheets at
641-792-3121 ext. 6535 or jsheets@newtondailynews.com