It was a busy Friday at the state track & field meet for Mid-Prairie junior Cain Brown. 

After a miss on his opening jump, Brown cleared 6-0, 6-2, and 6-4 on his next three attempts as his 110-meter hurdle preliminary was coming up. 

“It was kind of awkward,” Brown said. “They were telling me, you have to get your jumps in fast so you can get them in before the hurdles.”

On his final attempt at 6-6, Brown barely brushed the bar, which bounced slightly and stayed in place for half a second before falling to the ground. 

“It was kind of mental for me,” he said. “I mean, everything was there today. My approach felt good, my legs felt good. I almost had it. It was just mental for me I think.”

He didn’t have much time to be disappointed with his next event coming up. Less than five minutes later, Brown was at the opposite end of Drake Stadium, lining up for the 100-meter hurdles. 

“I didn’t even warm up for the 110s,” he explained, “I got over there and my heat was already on the track waiting to go. I get over there, set my blocks, and go.”

He finished 16th with a time of 15.74. He was sixth in the first heat, which was won by Spirit Lake senior Jack Latham, who broke Iowa’s all-time 2A record with a time of 13.74. 

Brown finished tied for fourth in the high jump at 6-4 to earn his second medal in the event. He holds the Mid-Prairie school record at 6-7, and finished eighth at the state meet a year ago. 

“I can’t be too upset with it — qualifying for four events,” Brown said. “It’s been a long year and then it ended in a good way. It’s not the way that I initially hoped, but I’m not going to be mad about it. I’m not going to stress about it. I’m happy with it.”

Seniors Carter Harmsen, Will Cavanagh, and Thaddeus Shetler each ran in four events at the state meet as well, while Tyler Helmuth and Kaden Meader were each on three relays. 

The top relay finish came from the 4x800-meter quartet of Robert Nagy, Shetler, Jayse Yoder, and Blake Creed, which took 11th with a time of 8:27.

“The 4x8 knocked off 10 seconds from their time at districts, so that was fun to see,” coach Dain Jeppson said. “I kind of got on them a little bit after the district meet, because I feel like we had a relay that could place at the state meet.”

When Shetler took the baton for the second leg, the Golden Hawks were in 10th place out of 12 in the first heat. He passed seven runners with a 2:03.5 split and handed off the baton in third. The Golden Hawks finished fourth in the heat and just three seconds out of the medals. 

Five teams from the River Valley Conference qualified for state in the 2A 4x800, led by Tipton who won the race with a time of 8:08.

The shuttle hurdle relay finished 12th, lowering its school record to 1:03.44.

Justice Jones, the only senior on the relay, made his state meet debut in the opening event of the 2A session. 

“My goal this year was just to make it here and I’m really happy that I made it with these guys,” Jones said. “We were hoping to maybe break 1:03, but we can’t be mad with another PR today, so we’re all happy about it. We ran as hard as we could.”

Braden Hartley, Brown and Meader were the other members of the record-setting relay. 

Freshman Jayden Stafford finished second in the 100, 200, and 400-meter wheelchair races.

“All my events went great, I got a personal best in all of them,” Stafford said. “I’m just glad I had people to chase and I got to the place I wanted to be. I did the best that I could today.”

Northwood-Kensett senior Wyatt Willand won all four wheelchair races. 

Stafford has big goals for his next three seasons. 

“I would say it’s showing the baseline of where I want to be,” he said. “Everyone has got room for improvement, and my improvements could be going for that gold next year as a sophomore.” 

Golden Hawk senior Jackson Gehman ran on Saturday with the sprint medley, which finished 20th. 

“Unbelievable actually,” he said about the environment. “The atmosphere is different than any other track meet we go to. 

The distance medley of Brown, Harmsen, Cavanagh and Shetler ran a new season-best time of 3:41.10 to finish 14. 

“Will Cavanagh ran a great 400 on our medley, broke 50 (seconds), that’s pretty awesome, and I’d consider that one of the highlights,” Jeppson said. 

The state meet saw record attendance with over 15,800 fans on Friday and also a three-day record of 39,415. 

Cavanagh said that watching all of the state meet and all time records being broken on Saturday was an experience that he’ll remember. 

“Every single event, in every class, it seemed a record was being broken,” Cavanagh said. 

In the 100-meter dash, three of the four classes saw a new state meet record. Dowling Catholic’s Mikey McClain set state meet records in both the 100 and 200-meter races. 

“The crowd all joining together to cheer them on for their accomplishments, despite knowing them or not, is what makes sports great,” Cavanagh said. 

A pair of Golden Hawk freshmen who ran in the state cross country meet in the fall, saw their first action on the blue oval on Thursday and Saturday. 

Emmett Swartzentruber said that his coaches prepared him to deal with the adrenaline that often gets the better of inexperienced runners.

“There was a lot of lecturing,” he said. “People are going to go out hard and you might be last or close to last, but don’t let that discourage you — you’ve got to stick to the game plan,” he was told. 

Swartzentruber did run in last for the first three laps, before his approach paid off. He ran consistent 1:17 400-meter splits on laps two through four. And even though his pace slowed, he passed six runners over the next two laps. 

He passed one more runner on the final stretch to finish in 16th with a time of 10:37, right behind Shetler in 15th. Shetler finished his Golden Hawk career with an 11th place finish in the 1600. Jayse Yoder, one of four freshmen in the race, finished 23rd. 

“It was crazy,” he said. “ There were so many people in the stands, and everyone started out hard. I didn’t run quite as well as I wanted to, but it was such a great experience and there were so many fast people to run with. It was really good.”

The Golden Hawk 4x100 and 4x200 relays both had trouble connecting on handoffs in the exchange zone and did not finish. 

“It’s just an honor to be down here,” Jeppson said. “There were some races that didn’t go the way that we wanted them to, but that’s the way it goes. There are highs and lows in sports and life. We’ll regroup and we’ll try and come back and do it better next year.”