By Mark Ruschau
MINSTER -- The story of the opening night of the 2005 Division III district track meet at Memorial Field Thursday was the weather.
A series of thunderstorms that rolled through the area forced the delay of three field event finals. The boys pole vault and long jump and the girls long jump that were scheduled for Thursday were moved to Saturday morning. With the three added events the scheduled start time for the meet finals on Saturday was changed from a scheduled 11:30 a.m. to a 10 a.m. start with the three canceled field events from Thursday and the boys high jump and girls pole vault.
The running events are scheduled to start at 12:15 p.m. with the girls 100-meter hurdle semifinals.
There were five events decided -- three on the girls side and two in the boys meet.
The nasty weather could not stop or even slow down the juggernaut that is the Minster girls team. The Wildcats won all three finals and in the two individual events they were able to advance a pair of athletes.
"We did really well tonight as we were able to get everybody out and that was great considering the weather," said Minster coach Kristin Heitkamp. "Everybody made it through to the finals except one of my hurdlers and she had a PR (personal record), so you could not ask for anything more."
Highlighting the field events for Minster was the one-two finish of high jumpers Ashley Meiring and Amy Kremer. Meiring won the event with a jump of 5-2 which was two inches higher than Kremer.
"I knew that Ashley had the potential to be a good high jumper and tonight she was the higher jumper," said Heitkamp. "This was a nice performance by Ashley and not only that but it also will hopefully push Amy to jump higher."
The other field event final was the discus. Crestview's Shea Dietrich won the event with a throw of 112-8. Minster's Mindy Hackenmoeller and Jenna Puthoff also qualified for the regional by placing third and fourth respectively.
The only track final was the 3,200-meter relay and the Wildcats captured the event in a time of 9:54.09 which was almost three seconds faster than New Bremen.
In the lone boys running the Marion Local Flyers 3,200 meter relay team set a District meet record as the team of Lee Homan, Dale Bruns, Ryan Winner and Tyler Speelman won in a time of 8:10.07. The time was a full two second s faster than the old record set Fort Recovery of 8:12.20 set in 1998.
Two odd facts about the Marion Local 3,200 relay meet record, it was six seconds slower than the Marion school record set in 2003. Also the Flyers record time from Thursday was a full two seconds slower than the time they ran last week at the Midwest Athletic Conference meet.
"Our goal coming into today was an 8:06 and we didn't reach our goal, but we were still able to win and move to the regional," said Speelman."We were two seconds slower than we were last week and I don't know why. It just gives us something to work on and try to get better."
The only other boys final was the shot put and it belonged to New Bremen. The Cardinals Jeff Thobe won the event with a heave of 50-4. Thobe will be joined at the regional meet by teammate Marcus Overman who placed third with a toss of 49-8. |
