Colby girls place second in Marshfield

The Hornets’ indoor track and field season continued with three more events over the past week. The Colby girls’ team had their first chance to compete last Thursday at the Marshfield Tigers Invitational, taking second place in their season opener. The boys’ and girls’ squads then traveled together to Menomonie on Saturday to compete in the small school portion of the Northern Badger Classic, held at UW-Stout. The boys’ team also competed in Wausau West’s invitational on Tuesday night, taking fifth place.

Wausau West Boys Invitational

The Hornet boys continued their indoor portion of their season in Wausau. There they faced up against nine other programs and took fifth overall, scoring 58 points. Wausau West took first at the event with 147.5 points, followed by the Shawano Community team with 121 points and Medford’s 109 points.

Colby notched two solid finishes in the 55-meter dash, with seniors Caden Healy and Nathaniel Robida both qualifying for the finals after finishing in the top eight in the preliminaries. Healy powered his way to a first place finish in the event, putting up a time of 6.87 seconds.Robida was not far behind his teammate, taking third with a time of 7.16 seconds.

The Hornets got another top five finish on the track in the 800-meter run. Freshman Weslee Pichardo and Loyal’s Connor Genteman came in mere moments from each other. Pichardo took fourth place in the event, recording a time of 2:24.95.

The 4x160-meter and sprint medley relays also scored for Colby, placing sixth and fifth respectively.

Healy provided his team a boost during the field events as well. The senior took first place in both the high jump and the long jump, reaching a height of five feet, eight inches in the former and a distance of 20 feet, 10.25 inches in the latter. Healy also took third in the shot put, his furthest throw coming in at 43 feet, onequarter inch.

Seth Hopperdietzel also provided a scoring performance for the Hornets during the field events. He took seventh in the pole vault after reaching a height of 10 feet, six inches.

Athletes from 30 different schools competed at Saturday’s small-school division of the Northern Badger Classic held at UW-Stout. With some events holding over 100 individual entries, the track meet is one of the largest that Colby will be competing in all season. While the competition was fierce, the Hornets still came away with some top finishes.

The girls’ team placed 10th overall, scoring 28 points. Prescott and Byron sat at the top when all was said and done, both scoring 47.33 points. Five points sep- arated fourth and 10th place.

Willow Oehmichen cruised to the top spot in the pole vault for the girls’ sole victory at the meet. The senior posted a top height of 10 feet, nine inches which put her as the only athlete to reach double digits. Hannah Haylie of Glenwood City came in second with a height of nine feet, six inches and no other pole vaulter achieved a height higher than eight-and-a-half feet.

Daelyn Rieck provided another top performance in a field event for the Hornets. Competing in the shot put, she improved on her longest throw of the season by five inches, reaching 33 feet, seven inches on Saturday. The toss was good enough for second-place in the event, trailing only Gilman’s Angell Bailey.

MaKenna Herrmann also took second in Menomonie. The Colby sophomore posted a time of 13:36.17 in the 3200-meter run, her third top-two finish of the young season.

Other top performances from Saturday included a seventh-place finish from Hayden Willner in the 55-meter hurdles, coming in with a time of 9.96 seconds in the final, an 11th place finish for Pearl Feiten in the 800-meter run with a time of 2:46.86 and a 12th place finish for Jazmyn Heeg in the 200-meter dash with a time of 28.86 seconds.

The boys’ team placed seventh with 29 points. Prescott took first place with 46 points, followed by Chetek-Weyerhaeuser with 38 and Glenwood City with 37.

Caden Healy recorded three top-three performances on Saturday. The senior took first place in the 55-meter dash, edging out Liam Schick of Byron with a final time of 6.74 seconds. He also took second in the long jump, his furthest leap registering at 20 feet, three-and-a-half inches. A distance of 43 feet, nine-and-a-half inches earned him third place in the shot put.

He also took sixth place in the 200-meter dash, putting up a time of 24.13 seconds.

Max Adams also had a top-ten finish for the boys’ squad. Adams placed seventh in the 3200-meter run with a time of 11:27.04. Nathaniel Robida also narrowly missed out on a top-ten finish, with mere hundredths of a second separating him from his competition in the 55-meter dash. The senior took 14th in the event.

While the Hornets could not quite replicate their first place finish from last year’s Marshfield meet, solid performances demonstrated that they will still be a force to be reckoned with this season. The hosting Tigers’ first team dominated the event, scoring 144 points, which was nearly 100 more than the second-place Colby squad’s 48.5. Marshfield’s “B” team took third, putting up 45 points. Colby’s “B” team took 16th, scoring six points.

The Hornets showcased their strength in long-distance events with their sole event victory coming in the 4x880-yard relay. The first-place team of Payton Roth, Casey Reynolds, MaKenna Herrmann and Pearl Feiten defeated Marshfield’s top relay by over 30 seconds, completing the course in 12:03.78.

Herrmann also added a second-place finish for the Hornets in the mile-run, finishing only behind Medford’s Lindsay Kahn in the event with a time of 6:25.43. Feiten also had another top-five performance on Thursday. The sophomore took fourth place in the 440-yard dash, putting up a time of 1:09.78, which was only a hundredth of a second slower than third-place Kendall Weiler of Owen-Withee’s time.

Hayden Willner and Daelyn Rieck both notched second- place finishes for Colby as well. Willner put up a time of 9.81 seconds in the 60-yard hurdles, finishing just behind Abbotsford’s Sydney Falteisek. Meanwhile, Rieck’s throw of 33 feet, two-and-a-half inches in the shot put was the second-best of the evening.

Willner was also part of the Hornets’ 4x160-yard relay team. She and teammates Jazmyn Heeg, Tori Underwood and Veronica Mateer took third place in a packed field of twenty teams, putting up a time of 1:29.05.

Other top performances included a seventh place finish for Heeg in the 60-yard dash with a time of 7.97 seconds and a seventh place finish in the long jump for Willner, who recorded a final distance of 13 feet, 11.5 inches.

UW-Stout’s elite meet is next up on the Hornets’ schedule. The event is to take place on Friday, March 31 and has a start time of 3:30 p.m. The girls will follow the event up with their half of the Wausau West meet next Tuesday, April 4. The start time is scheduled for 4:00 p.m.

UP AND OVER -Hayden Willner glides over a hurdle at Marshfield’s indoor meet. She would take second in the event.STAFF PHOTO/NATHANIEL UNDERWOOD