---

With a heap of meet experience already built up throughout the season, the North Branch track and field teams had one more tune-up before sections.

The Vikings hosted another North Branch Invitaitional on Wednesday, May 21, and the boys claimed the championship, while the girls fell behind two conference champions for a third place finish.

Boys

The Vikings were kicked into gear by Brian Grand in the 110-meter hurdles. Grand bolted from the start line across the finish line in 15.83 seconds to finish in first place. Grand also finished second in the 300-meter hurdles, finishing in 40.44 seconds.

Jared Grams continued to flash his brilliance in the speed events, capturing first place with a time of 11.44 seconds in the 100-meter dash.

Grams and Grand teamed with TJ Leason and Joe Klun to grab another first place in the 4x200-meter relay.

Grams, Klun and Leason also paired with Ryan Norman to cruise to a first place victory in the 4x400-meter relay with a time of 3:33.30.

Leason, who's only a sophomore, blew past the field in the 400-meter dash, winning the event in 53.02 seconds. He also picked up huge first place points with a win in the high jump. He leaped six feet even to win the event.

Sam Kalkbrenner scored some key points for the Vikings in the 200-meter dash with a second place time of 23.94 seconds.

John Morrison and Bryce Hutchings went one-two in the shot put event. Morrison heaved the shot 44 feet, nine inches, and Hutchings launched it 42 feet, six inches.

In other field events, Grand scored a second place finish in the long jump, and Klun notched a second place in the triple jump.

The points all added up to a first place finish for the team, but only by a slim margin. The Vikings came in with 167 points, and crosstown rival Cambridge-Isanti was nipping at their heels with 162. St. Francis rounded out the top three with a 130.

"The guys really performed very well," said head coach Brian Hasleiet. "It was a nice meet overall for us leading up to our Section competition next week."

Girls

A good chunk of the girls points came from the legs of a few relay teams. The 4x800-meter relay team of Haley Hasleiet, Briana Berthiaume, Shayna Gray and Miranda Charley started the meet with a bang. Their 10:02 was good enough for a first place finish and 10 points.

Catie Bettendorf continued with the momentum, finishing third in the 100-meter hurdles with a time of 17.38, and second in the 300-meter hurdles with a time of 47.72.

Charley and Gray were apart of another crucial relay team, the 4x400-meter relay, that scored another first place for the Vikings, and another 10 points for their total. Laura Backus and Sadie Kolke made up the rest of the relay team that finished in 4:16.14

Amanda Johnson was the other Viking to earn first place honors. Her nine foot jump was good enough to vault her into the top spot in the pole vault competition.

The Vikings finished third as a team with 115.4 points. In front of them were St Francis, who is the North Suburban Conference champion this year, with 141 points, and Cambridge-Isanti, who won the Mississippi 8 Conference this year, with 129.4 points.

Cloquet was just behind North Brnach with 112.7 points, and Hibbing was just behind them with 105 points

---