WIAA STATE T&F: GILMAN - Girls relay happy to reach final; Copenhaver 9th in triple jump

The Gilman Pirates may have come into the WIAA Division 3 state track and field championships with the lowest seed time of the 16 qualifying teams in the girls 400meter relay, but they also knew it wasn’t impossible to pull off an upset.

With smooth handoffs and smooth running in their 100-meter sprints, the team of Claire Drier, Jaylen Copenhaver, Patricia Kloss and Addison Vick did that on Friday, finishing eighth in the preliminaries to earn what was a surprise spot in Saturday’s final.

They dropped to 10th in that final, but they also did it by, yet again, lowering their school record, this time to 50.96 seconds. “Crazy, awesome and fun” were among the words the girls used to describe the experience.

“It was a good way to end the senior year and our last time as a relay team,” said Copenhaver, one of the three seniors on the team, along with Kloss and Drier.

“I just knew all the times were stacked on top of each other,” Drier said. “We were all the same. People would ask me, ‘do you think you’re going to make it to finals?’ I was like, I don’t know because everybody, 13th to ninth, was all the same.”

Based on sectional times, the bottom 10 seeds were just 0.84 seconds apart, which in the 4x100, could simply be the difference of one sloppy handoff. That’s been one of the key things for this team that just started running this relay together in May. The chemistry, which started to be built with a school-record time last year in the 800-meter relay, has seemingly been there from the start.

“This is just our fifth time running it,” Drier said. “We just kinda got put into it to beat the school record. We did it and then we just kept on going.”

In Friday’s prelims, Gilman ran in the second of two heats. The first ended with Mondovi (52.42) being the only team slower than Gilman’s sectional time of 51.94 seconds. Pulled by the competition in heat two, the Pirates lowered that time to 51.23 seconds, placing fourth in the heat ahead of Fond du Lac St. Mary’s Springs (51.34), McDonell Central (51.68), Bonduel (51.94) and Living Word Lutheran (52.03).

“I had a big smile on my face when I saw it,” Kloss said.

The attitude for Saturday’s final was to try to break their record again and where their place fell, it fell.

“(Head coach Mike) Gingras told us our time and was like, you have 51 on there, now you have to put on 50,” Drier said. “That’s all we were worried about and we did it.”

Kickapoo-LaFarge won the state championship with a time of 48.9 seconds, which set a new Division 3 state record. Fall Creek was second at 49.42 seconds while Westby took third, also getting under the 50-second barrier at 49.89 seconds.

Getting to state and reaching the final actually messed with the graduation party plans for two of the girls. Drier just pushed hers back a few hours on Saturday. Kloss said hers was pushed back two weeks.

Asked how long they think their school record will stand –– the previous mark had been on the books since 1996 –– the girls think it has a chance to last at least a couple of years.

“We have some pretty good freshmen,” Copenhaver said. “I feel like once they get to their junior and senior year, they might be able to.”

“I got next year,” said Vick, a sophomore. “I think we’ll be up there for awhile though.”

“I do think it will be,” Drier said. “50 is a good time. The state record time was a 49 (49.21) and we just ran one second slower.”

Copenhaver had Gilman’s highest individual finish of the weekend. She made the finals and took ninth in the Division 3 girls triple jump. Copenhaver did her best work in the preliminaries with jumps of 34 feet, 2.75 inches, 34-3.25 and 34-6.25. She was in ninth place going into the finals and was unable to improve her standing with jumps of 34-1, 33-8.25 and 34-0.5. She went a school-record 35-11 at the sectional meet in Colby.

“I didn’t even hit the board once,” Copenhaver said. “I really wanted to break 36 feet, make 36s and I really wanted to place and get in that top six but it just wasn’t there. But I got to jump with some good jumpers and that was so much fun. Pretty disappointed but I look back on all my other accomplishments and I’m proud.”

Fall Creek’s Alena Sanfelippo, who finished third last year, won the state title at 37-6, 2 inches better than Lindsay Vander Galien of Randolph/Cambria-Friesland. Deerfield’s Rylee Berryman was only 3 inches behind Sanfelippo. A distance of 36-7 was needed to get on the podium. That was how far sixth-place jumper Brielle Fishnick of Cassville-Potosi got.

Vick competed in the girls high jump Saturday morning. She got off to a fast start, hitting heights of 4-8 and 4-10 on her first attempts. But then she hit a wall, missing all three of her tries at 5 feet and placed 14th. Eva Brooks of Lena-St. Thomas Aquinas pulled off a mild upset, jumping 5-7 to win the state title by 3 inches over the top seed, Evie Bates of Newman Catholic. Mercedi Lapacek of Poynette and Rylee Berryman of Deerfield also cleared 5-4 and took third and fourth.

“It just wasn’t a good jump day,” said Vick, the school’s record holder at 5-3. “I came out of this with a smile on my face. I have next year and the next year, so I’m coming back.”

Gilman had two entries in boys competition. Senior Trevor Vick was hoping to challenge the school record of 42-10.75 in the triple jump Saturday afternoon, but things didn’t fall into place for him as he finished 14th in the preliminaries, 10 inches short of making the top 10 and getting into the finals.

Vick went 41-4.5 on his first jump, which wound up being his best. He went 40-8.75 on his second and 41-2.5 on his third.

Tommaso Gobbi of Parkview won the state title and set a new Division 3 record on his last jump, getting out to 47-8.5. Broc Billington of Weyauwega-Fremont also surpassed the old state record of 47-3.25 as he took second at 47-4.25. Koen Tumm of Fall Creek was third at 44-1.25.

Senior Max Ustianowski had a goal of getting under the 16-second mark in the 110-meter high hurdles. He didn’t quite get there as he was ninth out of 10 runners in his preliminary heat and 18th overall out of 19 qualifiers with a time of 16.27 seconds, which still ranks as his thirdbest of the season. The 10th-place preliminary time Friday was 15.59 seconds recorded by Oliver Post of Cassville-Potosi.

On Saturday, Brody Feldmann of Elkhart Lake-Glenbeulah, who won three state titles over the weekend, won the high hurdles championship with a time of 14.32 seconds, setting a new Division 3 state record by 0.06 seconds. Marathon’s Garrett Bracewell was second at 14.73 seconds and Edgar’s Tucker Streit was third at 14.8 seconds.

“I couldn’t believe how stacked we were this year,” Drier said. “It was off the scale. When Gracie (Tallier) and Bailey (Angell) were here, like when Gracie was a senior, there were only two kids that went to state. This year we had eight.”

“I’m so proud of our entire team,” Copenhaver said. “Even though some of the underclassmen and the freshmen aren’t getting what they want yet, they’re still so determined and they will not give up and they’re fine with doing anything. They are going to have lots of fun.”