Winter Series 6 Recap

Last Ticket to Ride

The focus for the athletes this weekend was to find themselves in the top 24 of the Milesplit rankings come Monday. That is the lone requirement to secure their ticket to the Indoor State Meet in two weeks. Coming into this weekend, we had 10 athletes holding strong across both divisional groups. This weekend’s meet brought two more athletes into the top 24. The first was Talawanda senior, Olivia Andrews, who cleared 10’7” which puts her tied for 20th for D1 Girls. The second, with a 13” PR, was Kings Senior, Kayla Willing, who jumped 11’1” to put herself tied at 11th for D1 Girls. While jumping a top 24 height was the main goal for most, others were looking to just improve upon their past success. On the girl’s side, Sophomore Claire Iaciofano found herself with another victory with her jump of 11’7”. She then took some jumps at 12’1” which would have tied the QCVA Club Record. She couldn’t quite get it to stay up this weekend, but she will have another chance at it in 2 weeks at Indoor State. Other highlights on the girl’s side came from two athletes who actually competed the night before as well. Freshman, Shannon Main, jumped a new PR of 11’ Friday before coming to compete again at the meet today. While she didn’t have as much success today as Friday, she still looked just as strong. Doing a similar load, Freshman Jesslyn Roberts also jumped a new PR of 9’6” Friday. Roberts had some good attempts at 9’7” but ended the day at 9’1”.

We did not see any movement in the rankings on the boy’s side as a result of our meet today. Despite no improvements at the high school level, it was a good tune-up leading into indoor state or the outdoor season. Leading the way was Junior, Grant Harrison, who once again was over 15’ with his jump of 15’7”. Much like Claire on the girl’s side, Grant couldn’t quite get 16’1” to stay up today. The lone PR on the boy’s side came from Beavercreek Middle Schooler, Eddie Schultz. Eddie came into this year with a 6’ PR. Today, Eddie improved to 9’1”, a 37” improvement!

Before claiming his victory in the pole vault today, Grant Harrison decided to play around in the sand. Grant had not competed in the long jump all winter, but decided to give it a go as a way to kill time before he was up in the pole vault. Grant ended up with a new personal best of 20’6.75” which amazingly enough, puts him in the top 24 for the event. If the rankings stay, Grant will have the chance to compete in two events at Indoor State in two weeks.

Overall, we had a lot of really great jumps this weekend from all vaulters. For now, we will wait until results are all in on Monday from all the meets across the state to see where our vaulters finish in the rankings.

Final Results:

Boys Pole Vault

1 Grant Harrison 15-07.00

2 Ethan Southerland 14-07.00

3 Cole Dangel 13-01.00

4 Micah Luck 12-01.00

5 Zachary Callahan 11-07.00

6 Matthew Bertram 11-01.00

7 Tyler Stenger 10-07.00

8 Conner Reifenberger 10-01.00

Girls Pole Vault

1 Claire Iaciofano 11-07.00