Golden Eagles win final tuneup prior to District Indoor Meet

By GARY HENERY

News Man­ag­ing Editor

Fol­low­ing Saturday’s tune-up meet at Cap­i­tal Uni­ver­sity, the Golden Eagles girls indoor track and field team is ready to defend their 2012 Cen­tral Dis­trict Indoor Cham­pi­onship this Sat­ur­day at 3 p.m. at Otter­bein University.

Joe Evener’s Big Wal­nut squad, post­ing 10 top-six fin­ishes, includ­ing firsts by Olivia Small in the long jump and triple jump, cap­tured the 65-team meet in Columbus.

“We used this meet as a tune up for the Cen­tral dis­trict Indoor meet, and I am very pleased with the way the team did,” Evener said, not­ing that the Golden Eagles were miss­ing two of their “big guns” on the track, Asia Med­lock in the 400 meters and 4x400 relay and Bethany Bogantz in the 800 meters. “We were still able to put together enough over­all points to dis­tance our­selves from the rest of the competition.”

Big Wal­nut enjoyed a solid day in the field event com­pe­ti­tion with two firsts, a sec­ond, a tie for fifth and an eighth which pro­duced a school record.

Small cap­tured the long jump with a leap of 17 feet, 8¾ inches and the triple jump with an effort of 35–11¾.

Jor­dan Lyle took sec­ond in the pole vault at 9–6 while Leah Thomas placed third in the triple jump with a 32–10 effort. Avery Kerns and Small tied for fifth in the high jump at 4–10. Han­nah Grif­fith placed eighth in the weight throw with a school record 27–7¼.

“I con­tinue to be very impressed at how well our field events are per­form­ing,” Evener said. “They are scor­ing major points in every meet we go to.”

On the track, Big Walnut’s 4x400 meter relay team of Saman­tha Godby, Addi­sion Shawver, Olivia Daggett and Kerns fin­ished third in 4 min­utes, 48.33 sec­onds. Record­ing a pair of fourths were Small with a time of 0.27.67 sec­onds in the 200 meters and Thomas with splits of 0:08.11 and 0:08.04 in the 60 meters. The Golden Eagles’ 4x800 quar­tet of Med­lock, Bogantz, Catie Craig-Bowden and Makenna Hem­ming placed sixth with time of 11:26.65.

Evener reported that 25 mem­bers of the squad were able to get addi­tional expe­ri­ence at the meet.

“We also got 25 girls addi­tional expe­ri­ence, and for me, that is huge at this time of year as we start wind­ing down from the indoor sea­son and gear up for out­door,” he said “Over­all 32 girls got meet expe­ri­ence and were able to com­pete and improve dur­ing the season.”

Meet strat­egy for Sat­ur­day is not com­pli­cated for Evener.

“Sat­ur­day at the CDI we will line up our top two com­peti­tors in each event and see how well we do in defend­ing our title from the past two years,” he said. “I am look­ing for­ward to watch­ing the girls, who for the most part have been under­class­men the past few years, step up and com­pete as the upper­class­men and take over from their predecessors.

“That is what it’s all about. Every year gives us a new team, a new look and a new adven­ture — main­tain­ing our stan­dards from one year to the next is our goal and chal­lenge. I feel good about the poten­tial this team has shown me so far this indoor season.”

Posted by Gary Henery on Mar 6 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.