While the Drake Relays took place last week in Des Moines, plenty of other teams still had opportunities to get on the track as the season hits the home stretch.
The West Liberty girls were one such team to take advantage of this opportunity, placing third in last Thursday’s Arrow Relays at Wapello High School with seven schools in attendance.
The Comets scored 95 team points, behind Muscatine’s 128 and Wapello’s 111 but ahead of Louisa-Muscatine’s 80 and Central Lee’s 74.
West Liberty did not find a gold medal on the day but had plenty of top three placements.
The hurdles were the team’s best event on Thursday as senior Laney Esmoil and sophomore Alyssa Lenz took second and fourth in the 100-meter event in 17.74 seconds and 17.78 seconds respectively.
In the shuttle hurdle relay, the Comets took second as a team in 1:14.94.
Earning third and fourth-place finishes in the 400-meter hurdles were freshman Liv Garcia (1:19.40) and sophomore Jayleen Kivi (1:29.72).
The Comets had a few other dynamite relays on the day, including a second-place 4x200 (2:00.19) and third-place efforts in the 4x100 (56.93 seconds) and 4x800 (12:24.63).
On the individual side, freshman Addison Guerra placed second in the two-mile run (12:55.36) while junior Ava Morrison placed second in the 800-meter run (2:53.75).
Also, in the 800-meter run, junior Mia Gingerich placed fifth in 3:19.79.
Taking fourth place in open sprint events included freshman Sully Hall in the 100-meter dash (14.12 seconds) and freshman Porter Maurer in the 400-meter dash (1:10.52).
West Liberty placed inside the top five in the rest of the relay events as well: the 800-meter sprint medley (2:10.11 — fourth), the 1600-meter distance medley (5:54.05 — fourth) and the 4x400 (4:59.02 — 5th).
The final track event, the one-mile run, saw two Comets score points with Guerra in fifth (6:12.93) and freshman Madelyn Deahr in seventh (6:40.89).
In the field events, the Comets scored points in three of the four.
The two best efforts came in the long jump from freshman Brynn Cassady (14-03.50) and the discus from sophomore Mallory Wulf (84-07). Both girls took fifth place.
Lastly, in the shot put, Maurer took eighth with a toss of 24-10.50.
Small roster, big results
The West Liberty boys had a different strategy this week. They took a smaller crew to their meet at Anamosa, only contesting a handful of the track events.
It resulted in an eighth-place team finish and 53 team points — perhaps a misleading result given the number of Comet athletes in attendance.
Central DeWitt won the meet with 132 team points, with Monticello (85), Mount Vernon and Lisbon (83), and Denver (77) making up the top five.
Still, this did not prevent West Liberty from posting some great times and finishes.
None were better on the day than the Comets’ shuttle hurdle team who took home the 4x110 title with a time of 1:01.52.
On the individual hurdle track, Dengler took second in the 110-meters in 15.94 seconds and the 400-meters in 56.10 seconds.
In the 4x100-meter relay, West Liberty placed third in 45.49 seconds.
For the individual events, the Comets only scored points in two of them. Both were the short sprints.
Sophomore Ramzes Moran placed second in the 100-meter dash (11.61 seconds) and junior Jonathan Cardona took seventh (12.08 seconds).
Lastly, in the 200-meter dash, sophomore Owen Daufeldt placed fourth with a time of 24.17 seconds.
It’s now getting down to crunch time for both track and field teams.
It begins with the girls’ and boys’ River Valley Conference meet, which is scheduled for Thursday, May 2 at Monticello High School.