St. Mary's Academy, Centennial vs. Sandy

The first scoring dual meet in the Mt. Hood Conference is always exciting for me and the rest of the track athletes at Sandy. This also marks home meet number two for us, so things usually go a little bit more smoothly than the train wreck that is usually home meet number one. The coaches in the Mt. Hood Conference all agreed this season to go with double dual meets instead of dual meets, so we would limit some of our meets due to the shortened season. This always effects training, but overall we felt it would be more beneficial for our athletes.

The weather for the meet was in the low 60's, partly cloudy with a slight breeze which is almost perfect for a track meet especially out in Sandy. We had several good marks and some great competition. The boys opened up the season with a strong performance against Centennial 91-53, but perhaps an even stronger performance against St. Mary's totally blanketing the Blue's boys team 145-0 (just kidding Mike). This meet also marked the debut 200m for our best sprinter Ryan Ball who ran a strong time of 22.92. This marked the first time that Ryan ran under 23 seconds. Ryan has struggled with injuries the past two seasons, and is recovering from an injury this season, but seems to be rounding into form. Some other great early season marks were Kevin Warren in the shot improving to 45'4. I joke with our throws coach that a 50+ shot putter is a staple at Sandy, and he needs to create one or more with the talent that we have. With Kevin, Michael Lynch, and Will Terada I believe by the end of the season this will definitely happen. A great surprise was our freshman javelin thrower Colton Safley (affectionately referred to as "Safeway" by me) heaving the javelin 164'4". This puts Safeway number two on the top ten list of javelin throwers in the Mt. Hood Conference. Another break through performance was had by Jordan Gray competing in his very first varsity event the long jump. Jordan had a great series of jumps starting with a 19'7" effort. I had Jordan make a few minor adjustments and after a foul on his next attempt, his first attempt in finals he had a great jump of 20'9" and followed that up with a 20'7" effort just to let himself know that his 14" p.r. was not a fluke. Jordan now has the best mark in the conference in the long jump.

The girls won their meet against Centennial 88-56, but lost to St. Mary's 81.5 - 63.5. We felt that the meet against St. Mary's Academy would be a very tough test for our girls. In a dual meet we do not match up with SMA very well because of their dominant distance runners and some very good jumpers. We emphasized to our young distance girls that they needed to break up some of the St. Mary's girls in the distance events. Tressa Hoffman had a strong performance in the 1500m running a pr with a time of 5:15.88. Our young distance girls have worked hard all year, but for many of them this is there first full season of high school track & field. Kayla Hendershot improved her conference mark in the discus with a toss of 126'1". Ashley Moss threw a personal record in the javelin at 114'8. Our new pole vaulter Ashlee Neal had a break through performance in the pole vault when she cleared 9'6". Ashlee's mark is currently the top mark in the Mt. Hood Conference. Our young freshman high jumper Katie Pelchar after giving her coaches a near aneurysm by clearing her opening height on her 3rd attempt, finished the competition with her best mark of the season at 5'4". The sprints became a great dual between our top sprinters and St. Mary's top sprinters. Elinor Priest (12.98)slightly edged our sprinter Sarah Kathrein (13.03) in the 100m. Brenna Hoffman won both the 400m (58.45) and the 200m with a time of (25.84). Sarah Kathrein (26.24) had a great race in the 200m as well losing to Meeghan Bermannn (26.21)of SMA. After the 200m two of Brenna's 4x400m teammates informed that her achilles was really bothering her but she still wanted to run the 4x400m. After a quick conversation with her I determined it was in her best interest for the rest of the season to not run the 4x400m. I knew that the meet with SMA was very close and it may have come down to the 4x400m, but when choosing between the health and safety of my athletes and the possibility of winning a meet I will choose my athletes health every single time.