Warrior girls qualify eight events for state track and field meet
The 4x400 relay of Delaney Scherf (left), Jaydin Dettman, Tori Sylvester and Hannah Asche qualified for state with a first-place, season-best time. (Photos by Bev Hamann)
Warrior Brooke Tieden cleared 4 feet, 10 inches in the high jump, earning first place and a spot at state.
Hannah Asche won the long jump—and advanced to state—with a distance of 16 feet, 3.5 inches.
Grace Kuehl (left), Lexi Loan, Tori Sylvester and Delaney Scherf make up the 800 sprint medley relay, one of four Central relays that qualified for state.
Jaydin Dettman has advanced to state in the 400-meter hurdles, one of four individual events the Warriors will participate in.
By Willis Patenaude, Times-Register
There are few certainties in life, but among them has to be the success of Central’s track and field coach Martha Bauder, who took the conference champion Warriors into the state qualifying meet at Edgewood-Colesburg on May 11 firing on all cylinders. From the moment the field events started, it quickly became apparent the Warriors were going to be in for another successful meet.
Overall, the Warriors competed in 19 events, finishing inside the top 10 21 times, including four victories, while compiling 99 total points. That easily put the team into second place behind Wapsie Valley.
Eight athletes qualified for state covering eight events across multiple disciplines, including field events, hurdles, sprints and relays. The Warriors also achieved nine new personal records during the meet.
“This meet felt a lot like conference. We started strong in field events and everything seemed to just click event after event. We expected Wapsie Valley to be extremely strong in the relays, many of which we felt we had the best chances in as well…We thought we had a chance, so I was pretty confident our times were going to be good enough,” said Bauder.
“We were thrilled to have competed so well and qualified in eight events. The team was also very happy with their second-place team finish among the 15 teams in our district,” she added.
In the field events, the Warriors’ lowest placements came in the shot put, where Marisa Rew and Madylen Gregerson finished a respective 17th and 19th. Rew, however, threw a personal best distance of 26-11.50 feet.
After that, it was top tens or bust for the Warriors, starting with Layla Embretson’s eighth-place finish in the discus with a mark of 86-01 feet, which was a new personal record. Staci Herman finished 22nd.
Hannah Asche got the winning started with a massive 16-03.50 mark in the long jump, while Lexi Loan put up a distance of 14-03.50 to finish seventh.
Brooke Tieden continued the winning ways, clearing 4-10 feet in the high jump to take first place. Eva-Rosa van der Heide hit a height of 4-06 for fourth place.
In the sprint races, Central’s Grace Kuehl and Tori Sylvester finished less than a second out of first place, with Kuehl hitting the line eighth and Sylvester 10th. The 200 included Savannah Orr in 15th and Oakley Armstrong in 18th, while the 400-meter dash was a Warrior victory for Delaney Scherf, who finished the race in a personal record time of 1:02.22—over four seconds ahead of the second-place runner. Alexis Thiese placed eighth in the race, after running a personal record 1:10.24.
The Warriors had to get creative in the distance races, given the four-event limitation for each athlete. That was especially true in the 800, which has included Scherf throughout the season but was instead run by Eva and Layla Embretson. Eva took fifth place while Layla was 12th.
In the 1500, Thiese earned eighth with a personal record time of 6:07.05, while Aspen Rork was 12th. Coral Rork was Central’s top runner in the 3000, with a seventh-place finish, followed by Layla Embretson in eighth.
The 100-meter hurdles were headlined by Taylor Moser, who finished ninth, followed by Gracie Cummer in 18th. The 400 hurdles featured a photo-finish victory by Jaydin Dettman, who ran a personal record 1:08.79, edging out the second place runner from Kee by less than a tenth of a second. Moser finished the 400 hurdles in 12th.
More success followed in the relays, where Central’s lowest finish was a 10th-place time in the 4x100 with Gregerson, Cummer, Orr and Herman.
In the distance medley, Herman, Alivia Wiley, Eva Embretson and Reese Berns put together a fifth-place run, while the 800-sprint medley of Kuehl, Loan, Sylvester and Scherf ran a season-best 1:55.73 to finish fourth, a little over two seconds off the winners.
The shuttle hurdle relay team of Loan, Berns, Gregerson and Moser also put together a season-best run of 1:14.41, putting them in third and less than two seconds out of first.
In the 4x200, Kuehl, Sylvester, Dettman and Asche finished second in a time of 1:49.17, which was .03 seconds off the school record and less than two seconds from first place. The Warriors took another second-place finish in the 4x800, with Asche, Dettman, Moser and Scherf running a season-best 10:11.00, under two seconds from winning the race.
But in the 4x400, the Warriors would not be denied. After running a season-best 4:08.90, Scherf, Dettman, Sylvester and Asche won the race by almost two seconds.
When the results were tallied, the Warriors qualified for state in eight events, including the high jump, where Tieden is seeded 20th, and the long jump, with Asche is the eighth seed. Scherf enters state as the 15th seed in the 400-meter dash and Dettman qualified as the seventh seed in the 400-meter hurdles.
The remaining events are relays, starting with the 800 sprint medley, with Kuehl, Loan, Sylvester and Scherf going to state as the 18th seed. The Warriors are seeded in the top 10 in the remaining relays, including the 4x800, with Asche, Dettman, Moser and Scherf securing the seventh seed. In the 4x200, Kuehl, Sylvester, Dettman and Asche are seeded sixth. Then, the 4x400 team of Scherf, Dettman, Sylvester and Asche arrives in Des Moines as the top seed.
The state meet will be held Thursday through Saturday, May 18-20, at Drake Stadium in Des Moines. A meet schedule is available at www.iahsaa.org/.
“Our main goal for the state meet is to prepare for each event as best as we can, have as many season-best performances as possible and take advantage of our opportunity to compete in the state meet in a fantastic facility and atmosphere. If we can do that, we think we can score between 15 to 20 points. If we get some big improvements, the sky is the limit,” Bauder said.
