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Class AA State True Team Meet

The Wildcat girls finished sixth at the state Class AA True Team Meet, held Saturday, May 17 at Eden Prairie High School.

Several first-place finishes helped the Wildcats pile up the points needed to come in sixth, just seven points behind Tri City United and four points ahead of Pine Island.  Each win in a true Team individual event, with 12 teams participating, is worth 24 points.  Freshman Annika Hall won the 3200-meter run, crossing the finish line just 2/10 of a second under 11 minutes.  Senior Laura Carlson heaved her way to first place in the shot put with a throw of  35’8.5”.   Senior Ava Bringgold leapt her way to a win in the high jump, clearing 5’2”.  Bene Smith’s vault of 10’6” tied for first in the pole vault.

Of course, in the True Team format, it’s not just high finishes that bring points.  Every finisher in each event gets points based on their finish, not just the top few, as in a regular meet.  For the Wildcats, the 4 x 800 relay team of senior Kaia Osmundson, junior Lauren Kowarsch, eighth-grader Kara Hall, and freshman Annika Hall came in second, adding 33 points to the team score.  Bringgold brought in 37 points with a sixth-place finish in the 100-meter hurdles and a seventh-place finish in the 300-meter hurdles.  Freshman Madison Eagle added 33 points by finishing sixth in the discus and eleventh in the shot put.  Senior Kendra Warren’s fifth place showing in the triple jump added 20 points to the Wildcats’ score.  And Bene Smith’s 13th place finish in the 100 meters and 16th place finish in the long jump added 21 points, in addition to the points from her first place showing in the pole vault.  And a good example of why it makes sense to try to finish as high as you can, even if you are near the bottom of the race results is Kendra Warren’s effort in the 100-meter dash.  Warren finished 17th, in 13.43 seconds to pick up eight team points.  In the normal format, she could have let up a bit at the end since a finish that low would not have scored any team points.  But in the True Team, if she had let up a bit and finished 3/10 of a second slower, she would have dropped to a tie for 24th place, earning only 1.5 points and dropping the Wildcats from a sixth-place team finish to a seventh-place team finish.

Team Scores

1.  St. Peter               536

2.  Rocori                   513

3.  Orono                   498.5

4.  Delano                 460.5

5.  Tri-City United    443.5

6.  Chisago Lakes    436.5

7.  Pine Island          432

8.  Fergus Falls         428

9.  Byron                    404.5

10.  Becker                  361

11. Winona                354.5

12.  South St. Paul     262

Track Tidbits

The Wildcats will participate in the Mississippi 8 Conference Championship today at Cambridge-Isanti High School (changed from the original location of Becker High School), with the meet getting underway at 11:30 a.m.  And on Wednesday, May 28, the preliminaries of the Section 7AA championship will be held at North Branch High School starting at 11 a.m.  The finals will take place Saturday, May 31 at 11 a.m.

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