FAIRMONT — Jesse Walters enters his first Sentinel Relays as Fairmont head coach with a girls lineup seeking its eighth consecutive Class AA crown and a boys roster shooting for a threepeat in the big school division at Bonk Track in Fairmont at 4 p.m. Friday.
In the Class A competition, North Union mentor Loren Looft’s Warriors return a pair of skilled varsity corps, with the girls looking to defend the program’s first-ever Relays championship and the boys with their sights set on dethroning first-time Relays winner River Valley (Sleepy Eye United combined with Springfield).
While no coach among the 30 competitive teams has made any predictions concerning the final standings, there are at least a pair of area individual showdowns in both divisions during the 68th edition of longest-running outstate regular-season track & field meet.
Hutchinson junior extraordinaire Isabelle Schmitz and Fairmont sophomore standout Macy Hanson could square off in the Class AA long-distance events.
Schmitz outdueled Hanson for the 2022 Relays’ 3,200-meter gold medal, 11:21.98-12:00.79, respectively. The Tigers’ phenom went on to earn a bronze medal in the 2-mile run in the Class AA state meet with a time of 10:43.14 to complement a fourth-place medal in the mile run (5:01.32).
Schmitz is coming off second-place finishes in the 1,600 (4:52.07) and 3,200 (10:43.79) at last Friday’s Hamline Elite Meet. The Hutch all-stater, who set the Relays’ Class AA girls 2-mile record (11:04.89) as a seventh-grader in 2019, could shatter both long-distance marks this Friday. Redwood Valley’s Kayla Huhnerkoch set the mile mark (5:12.6) in 2011.
Unfortunately for area track fans, Hanson — who also posted a second-place showing in the 2022 Relays’ mile run — has missed the majority of the spring with a nagging injury. If Hanson is not healthy enough to hit the track, the Fairmont girls team can turn to returning Relays’ medalists Corene Moeller, Jazlyn Geerdes, Alexa Bush and Hadley Artz for point production.
Moeller struck gold in the open 400 (60.49) and added a pair of silver-medal marks in the 100 (13.17) and 200 (26.57) at the 2022 Relays. Moeller went on to earn all-state status via an eighth-place showing (60.02) at last June’s Class AA meet.
Geerdes garnered second in the long jump (15 feet, 7 1/4 inches) and third in the triple jump (32-1) a year ago, while Bush and Artz each earned bronze medals. Bush threw the shot to a mark of 31-7 1/2, while Artz cleared the high hurdles in 17.76 and the 300 hurdles in 52.63.
Jackson County Central senior Maci Farmer, who claimed 15th in the 2022 Class A state triple jump with a leap of 31-10 1/2, could be a challenger to Geerdes in the Relays’ AA horizontal leaps.
Chloe Groe and Addison Armstrong return for Blue Earth Area after combining for three second-place finishes at last year’s Relays. Groe hurled the discus to 94-2 and the shot to 32-10 1/2, while Armstrong displayed her speed and strength by clearing 9 feet even in the pole vault.
In the Class AA boys field, Fairmont’s Sawyer Tordsen and Jackson County Central’s Caleb Vancura will reunite after splitting the two throwing events during an April 27 quadrangular in Fairmont.
Tordsen outdistanced Vancura in last Thursday’s discus, 153-3–133-5, before Vancura reversed those outcomes in the shot put by reaching 52-11 1/2 to fend off Tordsen’s runner-up toss of 50-4 1/2.
Tordsen, the 2022 Class AA state discus champion, however, is coming off a career-best and No. 2 all-time discus mark (163-2) in school history at the Hamline Elite Meet last Friday. Vancura finished fifth in last year’s Class A state discus at 151-8.
Fairmont’s Hank Artz, who claimed third in both the shot and discus at last Thursday’s quadrangular, also will figure into the throws competition.
Artz won the 2022 Relays’ shot put with a heave of 49-2 1/2, while Tordsen edged Vancura for second, 44-11–44-10. Vancura then out-threw Tordsen (140-8) and Artz (139-6) for gold in the Relays’ discus by clearing 148-11.
In the Class A girls’ long-distance races, North Union’s Jacey Welbig and Martin County West’s Katie Hartke have the potential to square off on the tarred surface on Friday.
Welbig, who qualified for the Iowa Class 1A state meet’s 1,500-meter run in 2022, is coming off a gold-medal showing in last year’s Relays’ mile run (5:57.69).
Hartke, a perennial Minnesota Class A state cross country qualifier, returns to Bonk Track after capturing first in the small school division’s 3,200 at last spring’s Relays in Fairmont.
Sprinter Shelby Fraker and thrower Olivia Merrill rejoin Welbig after the trio helped generate enough points to guide North Union to the 2022 Relays’ Class A girls team championship — 120–115.5 — over co-runners-up St. Clair and River Valley.
Fraker, who ran legs on the Warriors’ state-qualifying 4×100 and 4×200 relay teams last spring, heads to the Relays’ starting blocks Friday on the heels of double-gold in the open 100 (13.48) and 200 (27.7).
In the small school boys division, North Union sprinter Bryer Prochniak will face the same task as Fraker after striking gold in both the 2022 Relays’ open 100 (11.15) and 200 (22.57).
Prochniak, a Minnesota State University-Mankato football commit, has four Iowa Class 1A medals to his credit in the 100 and 200 from the 2021 and 2022 state meets.
Preston Guerdet, who qualified for state in the 1,600-meter run last spring, and Carter Morphew will look to generate points with Prochniak toward North Union’s team cause on Friday. Morphew took first in the Relays’ Class A high hurdles (16.54), while Guerdet fended off Madelia/Truman/Granada-Huntley-East Chain/Martin Luther’s Josiah DeMaris for the 2022 Relays’ mile crown.
DeMaris — who also placed second in the 2-mile run — will look to dethrone Mountain Lake Area/Comfrey’s Kody Wassman in the 3,200 on Friday, while Jayhawk teammate Ryan Koberoski returns after striking gold in the open 400.