Groton Area’s Kella Tracy, center, takes the baton from teammate Rylee Dunker, right, during the 1600 meter sprint medley relay recently at the South Dakota National Guard meet in Milbank. The duo ran on multiple winning relay teams Monday at a meet in Webster. Photo by John Davis taken 4/27/2023
WEBSTER – Groton won all five relay races in the girls’ division, while Aberdeen Roncalli thrived in field events during the Webster Invitational track and field meet on Monday.
Rylee Dunker, Laila Roberts and Jerica Locke ran on three of the winning relay squads for the Tigers. McKenna Tietz, Taryn Traphagen, Kella Tracy and Kennedy Hansen ran on a pair of first-place relay squads.
Roncalli had several athletes who won multiple open events on the day.
“It was a good day for us. It was probably the meet that we needed to have,” said Roncalli coach Brady Lesnar. “We’ve kind of hit a stretch of meets now. It went real fast where we went from nothing to everything all at once.”
Garrett Griffin won the 1,600-meter run, was second in the 800, and also ran on the Cavaliers’ winning 3,200-meter relay squad. Parker Grieben won the 110-meter high hurdles and 300-meter intermediate hurdles and also was a member of Roncalli’s winning 800-meter relay team.
Roncalli’s 1,600-meter relay teams both lowered their times by large amounts, the boys dropping 10 seconds and the girls 25 seconds.
“I thought field events went really well for us,” Lesnar said.
Maddox May won the boys’ javelin and Rylee Voeller won the girls’ javelin. Beau Price won the pole vault with a personal record height of 10-feet, 9-inches. Lesnar noted that mark gets him in the top 24 in Class A which determines who qualifies for state.
Aberdeen Roncalli’s Beau Price tries to clear the bar during the boys’ pole vault earlier this season at the NSU Invite in Wachs Arena. Photo by John Davis taken 3/21/2023
“I’m really happy for him,” Lesnar said, “and he was super excited.”
Roncalli’s Maddie Huber won the 100 meter hurdles.
Webster’s Katie Braun won the shot put and discus, and Groton’s Aspen Johnson won the long jump and triple jump.
Webster’s Katie Braun tosses the shot put recently at the South Dakota National Guard meet in Milbank. Photo by John Davis taken 4/27/2023
The Northeast Conference meet takes place Thursday in Groton.
While the Cavaliers want to make some noise in the meet, they also have their eyes on the upcoming state meet.
“The top 24 is definitely in our mindset,” Lesnar said. “We’ve got some relays that we would like to tighten up to make sure that we get in, but if we run them competitively, we’re going to score points and that’s going to help us out in the meet. We definitely want to be competitive.”
To see complete meet results, click on the following link: