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Some home cooking turned out to be just what the doctor ordered for the Wildcat boys' and girls' track teams. In the eight-team Chisago Lakes Invitational last Friday, May 8, the girls finished second to the Vikings, 180.5 to 154. The boys also finished second; Minnehaha Academy won the meet with 150 points, and the Wildcats edged the Vikings 140 to 137 to slip into second place.

GIRLS

The closest race of the day was in the 1,600 meter sprint medley relay. The sprint medley relay is not a common event, and consists of two legs of 200 meters and single legs of 400 meters and 800 meters each. Kaylee Ryan ran the anchor leg of 800 meters and was behind coming to the last 100 meters. She kicked it in and tried to get by Viking runner Carly Hinschberger. Hinschberger fought Ryan off for as long as she could. Ryan persevered, took the lead with 20 meters to go and won by a step and a half. The team of Ryan, sophomore Megan Klimek and eighth graders Katie Audette and Rebekah Meyer provided the Wildcats with their only relay victory of the day. Overall, the Wildcat relay teams had a pretty good day. The 4x200, 4x400 and 4x800 relay teams had their best times of the year, with the 4 by 200 team missing first place finish by just one second.

The Wildcats had a lot of personal bests. All three of the Wildcat entrants in the 400 meter dash placed and had personal bests - Makayla Grote finished second, Whitney Tinjum came in third and Cassandra Schultz ended up in seventh. Mary Cross finished third in the 1,600 and set a personal best. Both Tinjum and senior Lindsay Fowler-Wacholz leaped their best so far this year in the high jump, finishing third and seventh, respectively.

Junior Kristina Miller set a personal record in winning the discs competition with a throw of 103'9". The Wildcats got good performances from some of their most experienced and consistent performers. Fowler-Wacholz won the triple jump with a leap of 33'10". Senior Sam Genung jumped 16'2" to win the long jump and junior Chelsea Johnson again outran the opposition in winning the 800 in 2:26.94.

"Overall, the girls had a pretty good meet'" said Orwoll. We placed in every event but one, and had two or more girls place in just about every event. Some of the young kids are coming through and are very competitive. Freshman Mary Cross, eighth graders Kaylee Ryan and Rebekah Meyer and freshman Kelsey Sorensen had great days. Freshmen Zoe Hanson and Shannon Sullivan finished third and fourth in the 300 meter hurdles. And there were many others who did well."

BOYS

Versatile senior Brad Reiniccius was everywhere for the Wildcats at the Chisago Lakes Invitational. He won the high jump with a leap of 6' even, his best jump so far this season. He set a personal best while finishing third in the 300 meter hurdles. And Reiniccius ran a leg of both the winning 4x100 meter relay and the second place 4x200 meter relay.

The Wildcat team of juniors Brad Johnson, Ben Stanghelle, Dominic Novak and sophomore Josh Olinger came in first in the 4 by 400 meter relay with a time of 8:46.36. Olinger also had a personal best in the 1600 meter run, finishing sixth with a time of 5:04.83. "He'll break that five-minute mark yet," said Orwoll. Novak also won the 800 meter run with a time of 2:07.47. "Dom had a great day." Said Orwoll. "He ran a good leg in the 4x800 relay, and ran even better in the open 800. He took off from the start and everyone else was chasing him through whole race."

The Wildcats won the 4x100 relay with a team of freshman Trevor Thurnbeck, Reiniccius, junior Riley Myers and senior Mark Shaleen in a time of 46.45 seconds. Orwoll said "Trevor also placed third in the 100 and is having a very good year."

Senior Craig Close won the triple jump with a leap of 40'2.75", and senior Eric Helps' throw of 123' even in the discus was good for second place.

Sophomore Alex Vitalis, freshman Josh Wilson and Reiniccius all vaulted 11' in the pole vault, finishing second, third and fourth, respectively. For Wilson, it was a two foot improvement over his previous best height. "Josh is a pretty good vaulter," said Orwoll. "A two foot improvement is quite incredible and I know he can go higher. He's learning to fine tune his approach so he can work on other aspects of his vaults. It also helps that he loves to vault."

Freshman Eli Trochman placed in the 200 and helped out in a couple of relays. Orwoll said "It was nice to have a young kid like that fill in for an injured body. He stepped in and did a great job."

"We're really starting to bring our times down," said Orwoll. "Al of our relay teams had personal bests for the season. The kids were really competitive and aggressive. They did a super job. With the athletes ewe had available, I don't think we could have squeezed out any more points."

The Wildcats were scheduled to host the section True Team meet this past Tuesday, May 5, marking the third official varsity event on their brand new track. Nine teams will participate in the True Team meet. Next week, the Wildcats will head up County Road 14 to participate in the North Suburban Conference Championships, to be held at North Branch High School. The preliminaries will take place on Tuesday, May 12 and the finals will be held Thursday, May 14. The festivities will start at 4:15 p.m. both days.

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