BW girls claim fifth District indoor track title

By GARY HENERY

News Man­ag­ing Editor

The Golden Eagles’s girls indoor track team con­tin­ues to raise the bar.

Big Wal­nut claimed its fifth Cen­tral Dis­trict Indoor Track cham­pi­onship and its third straight by out­dis­tanc­ing the 27-team field by 33 points Sat­ur­day at the Uni­ver­sity of Otter­bein. The Golden Eagles pre­vi­ously won Dis­trict titles in 1996, 2000, 2011 and 2012 before mak­ing it three in a row on Sat­ur­day in Westerville.

Joe Evener’s Golden Eagles scored 89 points to out­dis­tance run­nerup Gahanna Lin­coln which fin­ished sec­ond with 56 points. Round­ing out the top ten were Pick­er­ing­ton Cen­tral, third with 48.50 points, fol­lowed by Reynolds­burg (46), Bishop Hart­ley (37), Watkins Memo­r­ial (31), West­er­ville North (28), Hamil­ton Town­ship (25.33), Wayne (25) and Hilliard Bradley (24).

“Words can­not describe how happy I am. Win­ning this meet for the third year in a row is an incred­i­ble feel­ing,” Evener said. “What makes it even more inter­est­ing is that we did it com­pletely dif­fer­ent than we did the past two years and with sev­eral brand new faces.”

Big Walnut’s jump squad, led by Olivia Small, Leah Thomas, Avery Kerns and Jor­dan Lyle, recorded 7 top-four fin­ishes with Small cap­tur­ing Dis­trict crowns in both the long jump (18 feet, 1 ¾ inches) and triple jump (35–11 ½). Lyle took sec­ond in the pole vault (10–0) while Leah Thomas placed third in the triple jump (33–6 ¾), Kerns third in the high jump (5–0), Small placed fourth in the high jump (5–0) and Thomas fourth in the long jump (15–2 ½).

Lay­laa Craw­ford and Han­nah Grif­fith backed the jumpers with three top four per­for­mances in the throws. Craw­ford set a school record of 33–2 ½ with a third-place effort fol­lowed by Grif­fith who placed fourth at 30–7 ¼. Grif­fith also placed eighth in the shot put at 29–9 ½.

With their per­for­mances in the Dis­trict, Small (triple, long jump), Thomas (triple jump) and Lyle (pole vault) have qual­i­fied to this Saturday’s Indoor State Meet at the Uni­ver­sity of Akron.

“The past two years were decided on the track, pri­mar­ily in the sprints. This year we scored 63 points in the field events and took a huge lead from the word go,” Evener said. “Coach Mike Ryder’s long jumpers and high jumpers dou­ble scored in the first two events, fol­lowed by Han­nah Grif­fith scor­ing in the shot put, and we never looked back.

“Add to that the fact that of the 17 girls who com­peted for us this year, seven of them did not qual­ify to the meet last year,” Evener con­tin­ued. “This tells me that we are doing things right in terms of devel­op­ing the younger girls and they in turn are step­ping up and replac­ing those who grad­u­ated before them.”

On the track, Jamie Annis placed sec­ond in the 60-meter hur­dles, break­ing the school record with times of 0:10.15/0:09.88 sec­onds; the 4x800 relay team of Asia Med­lock, Beth Bogantz, Catie Craig-Bowden and Addi­son Shawver placed fourth (10 min­utes, 59.66 sec­onds); Thomas placed fifth in the 60 meters (0:07.97/0:07.91); the 4X200 relay squad of Sam Godby, Olivia Daggett, Kris­ten Carty and Thomas placed sixth (1:56.94); the 4x400 relay quar­tet of Med­lock, Daggett, Shawver and Kerns placed sixth (4:34.47); Small placed sev­enth in 200-meter dash in a school-record time of 0:27.02; and Med­lock placed sev­enth in the 400 (1:04.01).

“I really have to praise the coach­ing staff and what they have done, not only for this meet (which was incred­i­ble) but also over the entire indoor sea­son.” Evener noted. “Coach Ryder is again at the top of his game in the jumps. His jumpers dou­ble scored in all three events Sat­ur­day and he has Liv and Leah qual­i­fied to the indoor state meet in the triple jump, Olivia in the long jump with Avery (Kerns) and Liv on the bub­ble in the high jump. Sec­ond –year coach Dora Riggs did a fan­tas­tic job devel­op­ing new­comer Han­nah Grif­fith in both the shot put and weight throw. Han­nah is con­sis­tently throw­ing 29s in the shot and broke the school record twice in the weight throw. Coach Riggs also did a great job prepar­ing Lay­laa who has hit 29 feet con­stantly and ended up break­ing the school record in the weight throw. Pole vault coach Kevin Abrams has devel­oped a great work­ing rela­tion­ship with Jor­dan and she is respond­ing well, plac­ing sec­ond in the meet and qual­i­fy­ing to the indoor state meet.”

Evener said the entire Golden Eagle squad came into the Dis­trict meet focused on what it had to accom­plish to defend their title.

“The girls came in focused on what they had to do to win the meet. I talked to them briefly about the impor­tance of team — that it would take every girl in every event to help us win.” he said.“ We needed to cheer each other and sup­port each other. And I reused the motto I have been chant­ing over the past decade — “Every girl, every event, every point”. When we con­cen­trate on what we do over the course of 16 (indoor) or 17 (out­door) events we are hard to beat. Every jump, every throw, every vault, and every stride is key to our suc­cess. Depth is our best friend.”

Posted by Gary Henery on Mar 13 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.