Colby track takes fifth, sixth at Gilman Invite

By Nathaniel Underwood

The Colby track and field team made their way to Gilman to take on the Pirates and six other programs on Tuesday evening. The Hornet girls placed fifth overall, collecting 83 points, while the boys team took sixth with 50 points. The hosting Gilman squad took the top spot in the girls meet, finishing with 134 points while Owen-Withee won the boys competition, ending the day with 178 points.

The girls 4x800-meter relay team and thrower Daelyn Rieck captured a trio of first place finishes for the girls squad in Gilman.

The relay team of Ali Adams, Isabell Kloth, Annamarie Schmitt and Veronica Mateer notched a win for the Hornets in the opening event on the track, defeating the second place Owen-Withee team by over 10 seconds to grab the top spot in the event with a time of 11:19.56.

Rieck, meanwhile, won both the shot put and discus competitions by considerable margins. Her throw of 39 feet, 2.5 inches in the shot put gave her a comfortable eight foot lead over Owen-Withee’s Kayla Rasmussen, who took second place in the competition. The discus was even more lopsided, with Rieck’s best throw measuring 113 feet, one inch. No one else broke the 80 foot barrier on Tuesday. Fellow Hornet thrower Edynn Hinker also scored for Colby in both events, taking fifth in the discus with a throw of 73 feet, four inches and seventh in the shot put with a throw of 26 feet, 11.5 inches.

The Hornets also had four second place finishes. The boys 4x200-meter relay of Chase Heeg, Dany Nunez, Adrian Weix and Carsen Thomsen posted a time of 1:42.10, defeating the third place Spencer relay by two seconds and trailing only Gilman’s team. The same team also took fourth in the 4x100-meter relay, coming in just tenths of a second after the Gilman and Columbus Catholic relays to take fourth.

A pair of distance runners also took second place, with Jacob Raatz grabbing the runner-up spot in the 3200-meter run with a time 12:50.18 and Schmitt doing so in the 800-meter run with a time of 2:44.93. Adams also notched a scoring performance in the 800-meter run, taking fifth place with a time of 2:52.87.

Rolyn Hopperdietzel collected the final second place spot for the Hornets, doing so in the long jump competition. The

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sophomore’s longest leap of the day measured 18 feet, 8.75 inches, putting him just a few inches behind Owen-Withee’s Brandon Geldernick, who won the event with a leap of 19 feet, 0.5 inches. Xander Buchanan added a seventh place finish for the Hornets in the event, posting a jump of 16 feet, 8.75 inches.

The pair of Hopperdietzel and Buchanan also competed in the high jump, with the former taking fifth place after reaching a height of five feet, eight inches and the latter grabbing sixth by clearing the bar at five feet, six inches.

Oliver Steen added two more scoring efforts for the boys squad in the field events, picking up a pair of thirds in the shot put and discus. His longest throw in the shot put measured 36 feet, 11.25 inches while his best effort in the discus traveled 121 feet, six inches.

Mateer added a third for the girls in the triple jump with a distance of 29 feet, 2.5 inches and Kloth and Jenelle Ertl did so on the track. Kloth’s came in the 400-meter dash, where she finished with a time of 1:08.88 and Ertl grabbed her third in the 1600-meter run with a time of 6:22.25.

The 4x400-meter relay of Adams, Schmitt, Kloth and Nicole Verhoef captured the Hornets final third place finish, finishing with a time of 4:50.65.

Other individual scoring performances included a fourth place finish for Romina Perez in the 200-meter dash with a time of 30.44 seconds, a sixth place finish for Mateer in the 100-meter hurdles with a time of 20.53 seconds, a seventh place finish for Carisa Steen in the 400meter dash with a time of 1:11.87 and an eighth place finish for Verhoef in the long jump with a distance of 11 feet, 6.25 inches.

The Hornets will be back in action on Thursday, May 8 as they travel to Stratford to take on athletes from 11 other area schools. The meet is scheduled to begin at 4 p.m.