Baxter boys win Iowa Star Conference track title

BAXTER — Finishing seventh last season, the Baxter boys track and field team completely flipped the script in 2022.

The Bolts registered five wins and scored 12 top-three finishes at this year’s Iowa Star Conference meet.

Baxter hosted this year’s event and impressed its home fans with 136.5 points. Collins-Maxwell was the runner-up with 123.5 points and Tripoli took third with 114.5 points. No other program scored more than 73 points.

Carson Scroggins led the Bolts with 21.5 team points. He won the 400-meter dash in a career-best 52.41 seconds and placed second in the 200 in a career-best 23.21.

The Bolts won three relays and Scroggins was part of one of them. The 4x400 team of Cody Damman, Cainan Travis, Rory Heer and Scroggins finished first in a season-best 3 minutes, 37.46 seconds.

Logan Rainsbarger scored 16 team points. He was the runner-up in the 110 high hurdles in a career-best 16.54 seconds and was third in the 400 hurdles with a career-best time of 1:02.84.

Rainsbarger opened the shuttle hurdle relay, which placed second. The rest of the foursome included Kolton Hill, Keenan Varner and Logan Jones and they finished in a season-best 1:11.5.

Treyton Travis was next in scoring with 15.25 points. He won the high jump with a leap of 5 feet, 10 inches and was part of the winning distance medley relay.

The distance medley relay team of Cade Robinson, Treyton Travis, Cainan Travis and Heer won the race in a season-best 3:53.7.

Heer scored 14.5 team points. He was the runner-up in the 800 in a career-best 2:06.95 and Perrin Sulzle finished fourth in a career-best 2:13.44.

Heer also anchored the sprint medley relay team to third. He was joined by Robinson, Alex Dille and Cainan Travis and they finished in 1:42.86.

The final win came in the 4x800 relay. The team of Sulzle, Damman, James Esqueda and Cody Samson hit the finish line first in 9:14.09.

The final third-place finish came in the 4x200 relay and the 4x100 relay finished fourth.

In the 4x200, Robinson, Hill, Dille and Treyton Travis finished third in a season-best 1:41.17.

The Bolts’ 4x100 team of Robinson, Treyton Travis, Dille and Scroggins registered a fourth-place finish in 42.5 seconds.

Matt Richardson also reached double-figures in team points. He was fourth in both the 1,600 (5:14.41) and 3,200 (career-best 11:06.98).

Samson finished fifth in the 1,600 (career-best 5:18.11), Nate McMinamen (111-8) placed fifth in the discus and Cainan Travis (18-1) was sixth in the long jump.

Finishing after Tripoli in the team standings was Valley Lutheran (72.5) and the rest of the 13-team field included Clarksville (62), Colo-NESCO (48), Dunkerton (46), Don Bosco (42), Janesville (38), GMG (26), North Tama (18), Meskwaki Settlement School (7) and Riceville (3).