Relay success, individual distance points push Rib Lake boys to 5th

MERRILL GIRLS INVITE

Olivia Lopez had a big scoring night and several others picked up a few more here and there to push Rib Lake to a fifthplace finish in Thursday’s seven-team Merrill Blue Jay Indoor Invitational.

Lopez won the triple jump competition, took second in the long jump and placed in both sprints to account for 27 of Rib Lake’s 59 points in the seven-team meet. Rib Lake finished ahead of Waupaca (56) and Prentice (22).

Merrill edged Wausau East 130-124 to win the meet, while Edgar (104) was third and Wittenberg-Birnamwood (76) took fourth.

Lopez went 32 feet, 3.5 inches on her best distance of the day in the triple jump. That put the junior 10 inches ahead of runner-up Molly Martens of Waupaca and got her close to her outdoor school record of 32-6 set at last year’s sectional.

She also put in a strong mark of 15-9 in the long jump competition which is a personal-best. She got 4 inches farther than Edgar’s Morgan Schnelle to take second, 8.5 inches behind Wittenberg-Birnamwood’s Reese Rogowski.

Rogowski also won the 200-meter dash in 26.9 seconds, but Lopez wasn’t too far behind, taking fourth in 30.56 seconds. Emma Tlusty tacked on three points by taking sixth for Rib Lake in 31.68 seconds.

Rib Lake filled three of the eight spots in the 50-meter dash final. Lopez took fifth in that at 7.3 seconds, Tlusty was sixth in 7.44 seconds and Isabelle Gumz got the eighth-place point at 7.9 seconds. All three were actually faster in the preliminaries. Lopez was clocked at 7.27 seconds, Tlusty finished in 7.42 seconds and Gumz was timed at 7.72 seconds.

Anna Martin gave Rib Lake some scoring in distance events, led by a fourthplace time of 7:06.66 in the 1,600-meter run. Waupaca’s Sienna Timm won it in 6:06.78, well ahead of Prentice’s Kylie Orysen (6:37.46). Martin was eighth in the 800-meter run at 3:20.91. Norah Schmidt of Merrill won in 2:41.81.

Gumz, Tlusty, Hadassah Nelson and Madison Grzanna sprinted to third place in the four-lap relay with a time of 1:36.28. Wittenberg-Birnamwood (1:30) and Edgar (1:32.89) finished ahead of them, while Merrill was fourth at 1:36.55.

In the field events, Tessa Krause was Rib Lake’s highest finisher, taking fifth in the shot put at 25-2.5, while Gumz was right behind her at 25-0.5. Grace Artz add- ed a 12th-place throw of 21-3.5. Wausau East’s Lily Clifford won at 33-5.

Tlusty cleared the bar at 4-4 in the high jump and Gumz hit 4-2 to place sixth and seventh in the high jump. Both got 2 inches higher than they did a week earlier at Marshfield. Camryn Glenzer cleared 4 feet and tied Wausau East’s Hailey Bass for ninth.

Back on the track, Camryn Glenzer got a point by placing eighth in the 400-meter dash at 1:19.02, while Coralee Glenzer was 12th at 1:25.58.