Host Wildcats sweep titles

MINSTER - The 39th annual Minster Memorial Invitational track meet began Saturday with the Minster girls and boys both using come from behind victories in the 4x800-meter relay races to take an early lead in the team competitions. 

That the last time either home team was challenged on the day, as both dominated the other fourteen squads in the meet.

The Minster girls won eight events but also demonstrated great team depth by scoring with two athletes in nine events on the day to total 170 points. Russia was their closest competition with 93 points while New Bremen finished in third place with 81 points. St. Henry finished seventh (33 points) while Marion Local placed eighth (25 1/2 points) in the 15-team field.
   The Wildcat boys won five events and scored with two athletes in another seven to accumulate 121 1/2 points, more than double the 58 1/2 points tallied by the runners-up from Russia and Versailles. St. Henry placed ninth with 45 points, Marion Local 12th (25 1/2 points) and New Bremen 13th (25 points).
 GIRLS
   Four of the Lady Wildcats' wins came in their traditional strength, the relays. The meet started with Julia Slonkosky taking the lead on the last lap of the 4x800 and then stretching the advantage for a 12-second victory in a time of 9:40.80. The team also included Gabrielle Barga, Logan Arnold and Morgan Pohl. Minster ended the meet with a more dominating win in the 4x400, as the grouping of Cassie Francis, Cassie Jutte, Maggie Meiring and Slonkosky smashed the old meet record by over four seconds in a time of 4:06.90. 
   In between, Minster also earned the victory in the 4x200 as Jutte, Barga, Francis and Katie Wuebker posted a winning time of 1:49.07. In the 4x100 relay, the top time of 52.22 was run by Arnold, Wuebker, Mya Francis and Paige Thobe.

The other four Minster wins came from a number of different events. Jordyn Heitbrink won the high jump as she cleared the bar at 5-4 (the bar wobbling ever so slightly as she passed over it). Savanah Luthman took the other Wildcat field event win as she improved from fifth place after the preliminary tosses to win the shot put with a 37-9 3/4 effort.
   Maggie Meiring bettered her victorious time from last year to win the 300 hurdles in 47.97 seconds, and Gabrielle Barga became the only Minster girl to win three events as she complemented her two relay wins with a four second success in the 800 run (2:21.33).
   New Bremen finished third in the team standings without benefit of an event win. Most of the Cardinals' points came from three third-place finishes and an impressive second place by freshman Lilly Hirschfeld, who finished just four seconds behind previous state podium finisher Emily Borchers of Russia in the 1,600 run.
   The only local girl to break the Minster stranglehold on event wins was Marion Local's Allie Thobe. Though she was unable to compete in the afternoon running finals due to another commitment, she did win the morning's long jump with a leap of 16-6 1/2.
BOYS

The path to victory for the Minster boys has usually started with the field events, but such was not the case Saturday. Jared Thobe earned the only Wildcat non-running victory as he won the long jump with a leap of 20-4 3/4. The other Minster individual to win an event was Eli Wolf, who supplemented his two wins in relay races with a winning run of 22.77 in the 200 dash. He just missed the grand slam for wins when he finished second in the 100 dash. 
   The Wildcats earned another huge chunk of points from the relays, as they won three of these races and finished second in the fourth.

The 4x800 relay of Joe Trzaska, Connor Tumbusch, Andrew Fausey and anchor Jonathan Fausey started out the meet on a high note by moving from third place to first on the final lap of the race to post a winning time of 8:25.19.
   Trzaska and Wolf formed a winning combination with Jacob Dues and Jacob Stechschulte triumphing in the 4x200 in a time of 1:33.97. In the final race, the 4x400, Wolf and Jonathan Fausey joined with Jack Poeppelman and Sam Dues to edge out Russia by less than one second with a time of 3:37.67.

The only other local event winner was Marion Local's Colin Homan, who cleared 13 feet in the pole vault to win the event based on fewer misses over Fort Loramie's Alan Holdheide, who also cleared 13 feet.
   While not garnering any individual event laurels, St. Henry gained points from its two second place finishes. The first came from its 4x800 relay, which only lost out to Minster by two seconds. The other came from Jesse Niekamp's high jump result of six feet.

Brad Rammel posted the best New Bremen performance on the day, finishing second with a time of 2:02.22 in the 800 run.