WASHINGTON 

For the first time in the month of April, the Highland boys and girls track and field teams took to the running lanes at Case Field in Washington for the annual Demon Relays co-ed track and field meet last Thursday night. 

The meet featured teams from all throughout eastern Iowa including Hillcrest Academy and Mid-Prairie. Other teams that made the jaunt to Washington included Tipton, Mount Pleasant, Iowa City Liberty, Cedar Rapids Prairie, Burlington, Fort Madison, Fairfield, Wapello, WACO, and the home Washington Demons.

For the Huskies on the girls side, they finished the meet with five points, good for 11th place in the final team standings. 

The individual that garnered the most points was Sophomore Mackenzie Davis’s fifth-place finish in the 100-meter hurdles with a time of 18.74 seconds. 

Fellow Sophomore Brena Hazelett finished seventh in the same event with a time of 18.85 seconds. Davis also captured a point in the 400-meter hurdles with a time of 1:17.90 to take sixth. 

Freshman Alexa Hahn finished a mere .04 hundredths-of-a-second behind Davis in the same event to finish seventh. Hahn also competed in long jump, where she leaped a distance of 13 feet and six inches.

The sprint relays were also fruitful for Head Coach Angela Stobel, as the 4-by-200-meter relay team scored two points with a fifth place finish in 1:56.75. The quartet was composed of Freshman Hailey Brun, Junior Lilly Barre, the aforementioned Alexa Hahn, and Senior Grace Prybil.

Coach Strobel recaps her team’s five-point night.

“I think we had a pretty good showing. There were some PR’s (personal records) in the 400 hurdles from Alexa Hahn and Mackenzie Davis. We had some PR’s in the discus and the shot put from the boys and girls side, so that was pretty exciting. I feel like there were those moments where we had some success, and there’s a little bit to work on. Some handoff stuff and things like that,” Strobel said. “It was good to get outside and to finally compete,” Strobel remarked about the recent poor weather.

During the sprint medley relay, defending Class 1A State long jump champion Sarah Burton began to slow uncharacteristically towards the end of her 100-meter leg in the relay. She managed to complete her handoff, but Burton was forced to scratch the rest of her events for the night, including the long jump due to a reaggravated hamstring injury. Coach Strobel spoke about Burton and her injury. 

“We had been resting and recovering. She seemed good, but just wasn’t going to work tonight, so we’re back to resting and recovering. We’re trying to get [Burton] ready to compete later in the season,” Strobel said.

The injury to Burton is certainly a blow to Strobel’s team, but there is still time to rehab and recover for meets taking place later in the season. And, as the results showed, her youth on the team has stepped up their game in relief of Burton.

Meanwhile, on the boys side of the meet, Highland was led by a 9th-place finish in the 110-meter hurdles by Senior Jackson Schneider. Schneider was also 14th in the 400-meter hurdles. Sophomore Elvin Hernandez was 14th in the long jump and 15th in the 400-meter dash.

Even though Highland did not collect any team points, first-year Head Coach Logan Moeller was still happy with how his team performed. “We had PR’s all across the board. We had PR’s in our splits in our relays. We had to make some switches for our relays. Brody [Sobolik] stepped up for us in our 4-by-1, and he had a great split. We came out and we got better. That’s what we hoped to do,” Moeller began.

Like Strobel, Moeller was also glad to see a meet take place as scheduled without cancellation. “It was definitely good to be back outside. It was unfortunate last week that we had some cancellations. It’s good for the kids to get out and about,” Moeller commented.

A busy next week is in store for both the Highland boys and girls track and field teams if mother nature can cooperate. Both teams compete on Thursday when they will trek to Lisbon to participate in the Lisbon Invitational.