Smith-Cotton wins 21 of 32 events at home triangular

Aside from dominant performances from Smithton’s Adam Wagenknecht and Benjamin Calvert, Smith-Cotton ran, vaulted, jumped, threw and hurdled past the competition on Thursday afternoon at Jennie Jaynes Stadium.

Pitted against neighboring Smithton and Windsor, the hometown Tigers’ girls and boys track and field teams welcomed the sunny, 70-degree weather by finishing first in 21 of the 32 events in the Smith-Cotton Invitational triangular meet.

Smith-Cotton’s success, though, wasn’t the main focus in a meet that was judged intentionally without team points and a clear-cut winner. Instead, Smith-Cotton coach Brad Hagedorn believes the experience and individual results told the bigger story in evaluating where the team is this early in the season.

“Our whole goal for today was to get some of our kids that don’t go to our bigger meets an opportunity to compete in front of their families and classmates,” Hagedorn said. “And also to get them a mark because we’re still trying to judge what they can and can’t do.

“Right now, we’re just trying to evaluate our athletes as a team and get the kids in the right event to set up for the season’s schedule. I thought today went well and we got a good look at where we are and where we need to improve.”

The Tigers, outnumbering both opponents by a clear margin, displayed their dominance from top to bottom, failing to compete in just two events and finishing outside the top three three times.

The dominance started in the discus and shot put. Dillon Malonee threw the discus a personal best 117 feet, 8 inches for first place and Jeff Crouch followed up in the shot put with a top distance of 43 feet. On the girls’ side, Kelcie Price threw a personal best 30-2.25 in the shot put and a 94-7 in the discus to snag two top finishes.

In other individual performances on the field portion, Allison Nevels — who also won the 300 hurdles — won the pole vault (7-0), Kelsey Griffin won the long jump (14-2) and Jessica Ellis followed up with a top finish in the 100 hurdles with a first-place finish in the triple jump (29-7).

In the track portion, Smith-Cotton had five combined relay wins for the boys and girls to accompany a slew of first-place individual finishes.

For the Lady Tigers, Elizabeth Ulmer won the 800 (2 minutes and 48.65 seconds) and 1600 (6:26.90) events and Kyra Kendrick outpaced Griffin for a top finish in the 100 with a time of 14.48.

On the boys team, James Curd won the 100 (12.46), Jacob Rosendale won the 800 (2:18.89), Michael Kearney won the 110 hurdles (18.70) and Gage Harden finished first in the 300 hurdles in 49.44.

Led by Wagenknecht and Calvert, Smithton provided solid competition for Smith-Cotton. Wagenknecht won the long jump (20-3.50) and triple jump (39), helped Smithton to a first-place finish in the 800 relay (1:56.81) and outpaced Curd in the 200 in 25.41.

“I’ve been looking forward to this for awhile. Toward the end of basketball season, I was ready for track,” Wagenknecht said. “It was a good day for me and I’m hoping to improve on these numbers.”

His teammate Calvert won the 1600 in 5:01.17 and the 3200 in 11:21.89 and helped two relay teams to a top finish. Kyle Ferguson capped off Smithton’s first-place finishes with a 58.78 in the 400.