Lions win hurdle relay at conference meet

By Jeff Yoder
Posted 5/7/22

The Lone Tree boys cruised to a conference championship in the shuttle hurdle relay on Thursday, finishing over five seconds ahead of Columbus with a new season-best of 1:05.38.

“We've …

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Lions win hurdle relay at conference meet

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The Lone Tree boys cruised to a conference championship in the shuttle hurdle relay on Thursday, finishing over five seconds ahead of Columbus with a new season-best of 1:05.38.

“We've really been trying to cut off time,” said senior Cade Patterson, who anchored the 440-meter relay. “We know what we can do, we know we can make it, and it's all about just getting the best race possible. And I feel like we did that today.” 

It was the first time under 67 seconds this year for the Lone Tree boys, and their best time since last season’s state qualifying meet, where they advanced to the 1A state meet with a time of 1:06.99.

“We’ve been talking about working that time down a little bit, especially getting into the last week of the season,” coach Mike Close said. “So it was a very important race for us to kind of put out there and show that we can do that.”

Patterson, Ethan Willoz, and Drew Gauley competed for Lone Tree in the event at state last year with Alex Viner, who graduated. Sophomore Jader Barajas has stepped into that spot for the Lions this year and has seen steady improvement over the season. 

“He's been really good, actually,” Patterson said. “At the start of the season, he would four-step all of them. Today,  I'm pretty sure he three-stepped every single hurdle. I think he might have ran the best split today.”

Patterson also set a new PR in the 110-meter hurdles with a second-place finish of 17.10 and Ethan Willoz was fourth with a time of 17.72. Lone Tree finished fourth in the 4x200 and fourth in the 4x400 as well. 

“I thought our kids ran really hard in the events that we had,” Close said.”We had a lot of PRs tonight,  and running the best in our events this time of year is great.Our 4x100 team, I was really proud of. Our handoffs were really good and I thought that was a pretty big race for us as well.”

Andrew Hotz, Ethan Bockelman, Harry Brenneman and Barajas won their heat with a season-best time of 47.30, finishing sixth overall. The Lion boys finished seventh out of nine teams with 56 points, while the Lone Tree girls were sixth with 68 points.

“We have a really good conference top to bottom, whether it's the north or the south, so it was really good competition,” coach Chad Shield said. “This was a good meet for us to figure out where we are and where we can be in a week from now.”

The sprint medley of Arlie Lorack, Avery Morarie, Vivian Zaruba, and Rylee Shield finished second with a time of 2:00.63. 

“The sprint medley continues to do really well,” Shield said, “we're still a couple seconds away but I'm confident with warmer weather we can get there.”

Riley Shield was third in the 400-meter dash with a time of 1:04.25 and Kasey Chown was third in the high jump with a jump of 4-6. Avery Morarie was fourth in the long jump with a leap of 14-9 and also finished fourth in the 200-meter dash, her first time running the event. Shield ran the 400-meter hurdles for the first time and took fourth as well with a time of 1:18.98.

Layla McMartin finished fifth in the 3000-meter run with a new PR for Lone Tree.

 “She's been injured all season, but it's really good for her to get out there and compete tonight and finish that race for us,” Shield said. “Vivian (Zaruba) in the 800, she cut another two seconds off her PR and Lila Bell set a PR 1500 for us, did a really nice job.”

Alex Dautremont was seventh in the discus with a throw of 80-11.

“I’m really proud of Alex Dautremont as well,” Shield said. “She threw over 80 feet for the first time in discus and was able to place in a really really tough meet.”

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