Sports

Records fall as Bottineau has strong region meet

By Tyler Ohmann

05/21/2013

Records fell and 11 new events qualified for the state tournament for the Bottineau track and field teams in last Saturday’s North Central Region track meet at Johnson field in Rugby.

Harrison Aide, Owen Furby and Trevor Wettlaufer set personal and North Central Region records with performances in their signature events.

Aide set a school and meet record by clearing 14-feet, seven-inches at the pole vault late Saturday. Aide also cleared the bar twice at 15-feet, but narrowly knocked it down on his way down.

Wettlaufer ran a personal and meet record 51.74 seconds in the 400 meters and took first place. Ethan Kerslake of Bottineau took second in the competition with 53.39 and qualified for state.

Furby tossed the shot put 44-feet, five inches to set a North Central Region record and take first place.
All together the Bottineau boy’s managed to rack up 112 points, which pushed them up to third place. They were a ways behind winner Rugby, who tallied 201 points to win the team aspect.

Highlights for the girls included a first place finish for the 4x100 relay team, who finished in 53.56 seconds. The team was comprised of Courtney Gallagher, Maria Diepolder, Megan Fix and Bailey Neubauer.

The Stars finished in fifth place as a team with 54 total points. Rugby won the meet with 215.5 points.

In total Bottineau had seven new state qualifiers for the Braves and four for the Stars.

“We had a very good day for both the boys and girls teams today,” stated Bottineau head coach David Hoff. “We had a lot of season-best performances despite the wet weather to start the day. I was very pleased with how our kids competed.”

Several new events qualified for state for both the Braves and Stars as athletes needed to finish in the top three in an event to advance to state, which will be held on May 24-25 in Bismarck.

New qualifiers for the Braves included: senior Alberto Moncera in the 100 meters with a second place time of 11.82 seconds; 4x100 relay of Moncera, Wettlaufer, Kerslake and Aide with a time of 46.14 and first place; 4x200 relay of the same makeup and a time of 1:34.96 and first place; the 4x400 relay team of Aide, Wettlaufer, Kerslake and senior Ty Domben with a time of 3:37.72 and first place and Riley Gallagher with a third place finish at eight-feet in the pole vault.

Both Moncera and Domben came up fractions short in other events as Moncera ran a fourth-place 24.75 in the 200 meters to narrowly miss advancing and Domben ran a 210.89 for fourth place in the 800 meters.

Other narrow misses included Braden Pewe, fifth place at five-feet, four inches in the high jump and Kailin Millang at seven-feet, six inches and fourth place in the pole vault.

On the boy’s side of the meet Matt English of Harvey-Wells County was named Senior Athlete of the Year and Scott Grochow of Rugby was named Coach of the Year.

For the Stars other state qualifiers included the second place finish of 13.3 seconds in the 100 meters by Gallagher; the 4x400 relay teams second place finish of 4:23.46 (team members of Diepolder, Gallagher, Sydnie Nelson and Stephanie Brenden); Brenden’s third place jump of 15-feet, seven inches in the long jump and Diepolder’s second place seven-feet, six-inch pole vault.

Narrow misses for the Stars came from a fourth place run of 5:37.93 seconds by Nelson and a fourth place finish of 1:55.43 in the 4x200 relay.

Senior Athletes of the Year for the girls were Aubrey Hovland of Rugby and Katelyn Engh of Benson County. Coach of the Year was Bill Jansen of Rugby.

All together 13 athletes for Bottineau track and field will participate at the state meet.