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The North Branch girls track and field team duked it out with Chisago Lakes for the second spot in the Mississippi 8 Conference championships on Wednesday, May 22, but the Vikings fell just five points short of the ‘Cats, while both finished quite a bit behind M8C champions Monticello.

But, the Vikes did get plenty of the all conference performers, including a handful of conference champions. Shaeyna Andreotti won the 100 meter hurdles with a time of 15.96 seconds, and the senior came in second in the 300 meter hurdles. Ella Dick got two conference titles. She had a solo win in the pole vault event, clearing 11 feet, and besting teammate Dakota Esget by six inches. Then Dick teamed with Ella Kuhlman, Sophia Benedict and Kailie Kopp to win the 4x100 meter relay with a time of 50.73 seconds.

The other title went to another relay team. Ella’s older sister Derrian, along with Ava Witkowski, Andreotti and Kuhlman won the 4x400 meter relay with a time of 4:12.24. The 4x200 meter relay team of Derrian Dick, Sophia Thorsen, Benedict and Esget also came close to winning, finishing in second place.

Other top five finishers for the Vikings were a third and fourth place finish from Thorsen and Esget, respectively, in the 100 meter dash. Thorsen then moved up even higher, as the freshman finished the 200 meter run in a personal best time of 25.46 seconds. Her fellow Sophia, Sophia Benedict, finished in fifth place with a personal record 26.50 seconds.

Madison Whitman came in third place in the 800 meter run with a time of 2:26.50 and had a fifth place finish in the long jump. Kuhlman grabbed third in the 300 hurdles.

The Vikings finished with 113 team points, just behind CL’s 118.5 points. Monticello ran away with 153.5 points.

Boys

On the boys side, there were a few strong performances, but the Vikings weren’t able to capture any individual conference champions. 

Brody Rothe came the closest, as the junior finished second place in the 300 meter hurdles. He also had a personal best 16.16 second run in the 100 hurdles to finish in sixth. Two relay teams finished top five, with the 4x200 quad of Michael Dragicevich, Jacob Robillard, Zach Sway and Carson Weber coming in fourth and the 4x100 relay team of Robillard, Rothe, Dragicevich and Weber finishing in fifth place.

Jordan Stumm earned a fourth place finish in the 800 meter run and then backed that up with a seventh in the 1,600 meter run.

In the high jump, Blake Lelem finished seventh and Weber came in sixth in the triple jump.

North Branch finished in eighth in the nine team meet, scoring 33 points to beat out Zimmerman. Monticello won the boys M8C title, as well, scoring 163 points to best second place Cambridge-Isanti by 35 points.

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