Tallier lowers record in 200 and wins twice; Angell wins shot

EASTERN CLOVERBELT TRACK & FIELD

Gracie Tallier lowered her 200-meter dash school record and defended her 2021 Eastern Cloverbelt titles in that race as well as the 100-meter dash and Bailey Angell claimed her first shot put title at Tuesday’s league championships held at Colby High School.

Those performances, along with three placing efforts from freshman Claire Drier led the Pirates to a fourth-place finish at the nine-team meet, which is also where the Pirates finished last year.

Colby successfully defended its 2021 title and did so fairly easily by scoring 212.5 points, 70 ahead of runner-up Loyal. Neillsville was a distant third with 77.5 points, followed by Gilman (58), Owen-Withee (46), Spencer (35), Greenwood (35), Granton (23.5) and Columbus Catholic (22).

Tallier’s winning time in the 200-meter dash was 26.09 seconds, a full second ahead of Loyal’s Aubre Robida and 1.09 seconds ahead of Robida’s teammate, Leah Scherer. Drier got three sixth-place points with her time of 28.51 seconds.

Tallier, who initially broke the school record last year, lowered her time another 0.09 seconds from a meet May 6 at Stanley-Boyd.

In the 100, Tallier finished in 12.88 seconds to beat Robida by 0.4 seconds and Columbus Catholic’s Mira Torbey by 0.65 seconds. Drier tacked on four points by placing fifth in 13.97 seconds. Ellie Drier was ninth in the preliminaries at 15.27 seconds and added a 14th-place time of 31.6 seconds in the 200.

Angell, a sophomore, dethroned Colby senior Malayna Reick as the conference’s shot put champion with a toss of 36 feet, 4 inches in the finals. Angell also had the top preliminary throw at 34-6. Rieck was in second after the prelims at 32-7.25 and improved to 34-3.75 in the final, which still wouldn’t have been enough, but Angell made sure of it with her best throw of the day. Gilman’s Emma Grunseth had her best throw of the year, 26-8, and placed 12th.

In the discus, however, Angell got off her personal-best throw of 116-11, but it wasn’t enough to keep her unbeaten streak of 2022 alive as Rieck got that event championship with a throw of 126 feet. Neillsville’s Courtney Oldham was a distant third at 95-2. Rieck’s top throw came in the preliminaries. Angell was at 114-4 after the prelims and got even further in the finals. Grunseth just missed scoring, taking ninth at 79-1.

Tallier also was the reigning champion in the long jump, but this year’s title went to Torbey with a jump of 15-8.25. Drier entered the finals as the leader at 15-3.75, but Torbey, who was second at 14-6.75 jumped past her. Tallier finished fourth at 14-4, 5 inches behind Ava Miller of Neillsville.

Gilman’s boys scored 18 points to beat Granton by nine for eighth place. Neillsville defended its 2021 title by scoring 200.5 points to easily beat Colby (125), Owen-Withee (113), Spencer (78.5), Greenwood (53), Columbus Catholic (41) and Loyal (30).

Junior Branden Ustianowski was responsible for eight of those points with two fifth-place finishes. The first came in the 100-meter dash where he was the last qualifier with a ninth-place preliminary time of 12.52 seconds, but he cut that to 12.25 seconds in the final. Colby’s Caden Healy won the race in 11.57 seconds, 0.31 seconds ahead of Spencer’s Landon

CLOVERBELT on page 13 NATHANIEL UNDERWOOD/TRIBUNE PHONOGRAPH Behselich. Pirate Max Ustianowski was 12th in the preliminaries at 13.39 seconds. Later, Branden Ustianowski ran the 300-meter intermediate hurdles in 46.8 seconds, while teammate Quintin Franzen was 11th in 51.8 seconds. Ustianowski trailed winner Logan Amacher of Owen-Withee by 4.24 seconds.

Gilman got seven points in the 400-meter dash, where Braeden Person lowered his time to 58.9 seconds and placed fifth and Gabe Brunner just missed getting under the minute barrier in a sixth-place time of 1:00.3. Freshman Mitchell Moran was 10th in 1:04.87. Spencer’s Noah Schultz won the title in 54.97 seconds, 0.41 seconds ahead of Neillsville’s Ian Zoschke.

Senior Zack Marion scored Gilman’s other three points. He got two of them with a seventh-place throw of 100-2, a new personal best, in the discus. He didn’t move up place-wise following the preliminaries, but he did distance-wise by 6.5 feet. Caleb Marion was 10th in the prelims at 86-8. Zack Marion was eighth in the shot put at 36-10, comfortably beating Granton’s Wyatt Karl (34-5.5) for that last point. Bryce Chovan (30-10) and Caleb Marion (30-8) were 14th and 15th in the preliminaries.

Brady McAlpine lowered his time of 26.71 seconds while taking 11th and Person was 13th at 26.99 seconds in the 200-meter preliminaries. Moran was 12th in the long jump at 13-11.25.

On to regionals

Gilman is one of 11 teams assigned to Monday’s WIAA Division 3 Flambeau regional, which is scheduled to start at 4 p.m. Along with the host Falcons, Rib Lake, Bruce, Cadott, Ladysmith, Lake Holcombe-Cornell, Owen-Withee, Phillips, Prentice and Thorp are the others.

The top four finishers in each event will advance to the May 26 WIAA Division 3 sectional in Colfax, where the top four in each event will qualify for the June 3-4 state meet at UW-La Crosse.

Ladysmith was the 2021 girls regional champion, while Cadott is the defending boys champion.

Gilman’s Branden Ustianowski jumps over the corner hurdle in the 300-meter race Tuesday in Colby. He finished fifth in the race with a time of 46.8 seconds.See