Abbotsford track competes with best in Marawood

By Nathaniel Underwood

The Abbotsford track and field team competed at the Marawood conference meet held last Monday in Marathon. Both the boys and the girls teams finished the day with 37 points, the boys tying for sixth with Newman Catholic out of 11 teams while the girls took ninth overall out of 12 teams.

The hosting Marathon squad and Stratford collided for the top spots in the two team competitions, with the Tiger girls taking the edge finishing with 101 points to Marathon’s 98.33 points while the Red Raider boys won the boys’ title, defeating Stratford 165 to 155.

Christian Fuentes had the sole victory for the Falcons at the conference meet. The junior continued his solid performance this season in the long jump and claimed a first team all-conference honor after winning the event. Fuentes nearly reached the 21 foot mark, posting a leap of 20 feet, 11.5 inches as his best for the day. This carried him past Chequamegon’s Cooper Michalski, who was about half a foot behind with a jump of 20 feet, 6.5 inches in second place.

Margo Pogodzinski also grabbed a pair of all-conference nods for Abbotsford on Monday. The senior thrower notched a pair of second place finishes for the Falcons, doing so in both the discus and the shot put. She was just two feet off from claiming the top spot in the discus competition, posting a throw of 117 feet, eight inches, behind only Athens’ Sy’Rih Hartwig’s best throw of 119 feet, 11 inches. Hartwig was also the only athlete to top Pogodzinski in the shot put, where the Bluejays’ junior posted a throw of 40 feet, 11 inches and Pogodzinski’s top toss measured 33 feet, four inches.

Chase Boller and Celia Schinlder both grabbed individual fourth place finishes at the meet. Boller did so by clearing a height of six feet even in the high jump. While winner Jed Henderson of Rib Lake distanced himself from the pack with a final height of six feet, three inches, the next three athletes all maxed out at six feet. The tiebreakers did not go in Boller’s favor, giving him the final spot of the three to reach the six foot height.

Schindler also earned her spot in a field event, taking fourth in the triple jump. Her jump of 33 feet put her right between a pair of Edgar Wildcats; Rachel Burke finished with a distance of 33 feet, two inches while Schindler narrowly edged out Addisyn Trawicki, whose best attempt measured 32 feet, 11 inches. Teammate Lauryn Harris also scored in the event, taking seventh with an attempt of 32 feet, 3.25 inches.

A trio of Falcon relays also picked up fourth place finishes. Two boys sprint relays earned their spots in a tightly contested field. The 4x100-meter relay team of Boller, Fuentes, Luis Gonzalez Lujan and Carter Cihlar came in just one tenth of a second behind the Assumption relay and three tenths of a second ahead of the Marathon squad with a time of 45.98 seconds. Meanwhile, the 4x200-meter relay team of Boller, Cihlar, Fuentes and Jovanny Cruz earned their spot by holding off the Marathon relay by seven hundredths of a second while coming in a tenth of a second behind the Auburndale team. They finished with a final time of 1:36.32.

The girls 4x200-meter team of Reyna Romo, Chloe Cihlar, Hazel Flink and Lauryn Harris also earned fourth. They defeated the fifth-place Auburndale relay by one-tenth of a second to earn their placement, finishing with a final time of 1:59.91.

Both the boys and the girls 4x400-meter relays took fifth in their respective competitions. The girls team of Schinlder, Romo, Harris and Chloe Cihlar posted a time of 4:40.65 while the boys squad of Cruz, Fuentes, Carter Cihlar and Miguel Bautista picked up their fifth place finish with a time of 3:51.17.

Harris and Cruz both added sixth place finishes for the Falcons. Harris did so in the long jump, where her jump of 15 feet, 5.75 inches put her right behind Edgar’s Trawicki, who took fifth in the event. Meanwhile, Cruz earned his spot in the 100-meter dash, finishing with a time of 12.18 seconds. This moved him up two spots from the preliminary race, where he had taken eighth with a time of 12.33 seconds to take the last qualifier spot in the finals.

Flink had a similar result in the girls 100-meter dash, where she qualified in the eighth spot in the prelims but then shaved off three tenths of a second off her time in the finals to move up a spot and take seventh overall with a time of 14.68 seconds.

Carter Cihlar and Marcus VanLuven had the final two scoring performances for the Falcons on Monday. The former took seventh place in an impressive pole vaulting field, reaching a height of 12 feet. VanLuven earned an eighth place finish in the shot put, where he registered a throw of 39 feet, 8.5 inches.