Glenwood girls10th at state track, boys place 13th

The Glenwood girls won five medals and placed a program-best 10th overall in the Class 3A standings with a school record 24 team points at the Iowa State Track and Field Meet in Des Moines.

Davenport Assumption was the girls team champion with 79 points.
But it was his own team Glenwood coach Brad Rasmussen was more impressed by.

“It was awesome,” Rasmussen said. “The girls performed well. The weather was absolutely great. But what more can you say when we finish 10th at the state meet – that’s the best finish in Glenwood history as far back as I can go. We also scored the most points. This was a great weekend. The kids represented Glenwood extremely well on and off the track.”

Center Point-Urbana was the boys champion with 56 points to narrowly edge second place Mount Pleasant (54 points) and Algona (53). The Glenwood boys, who scored just two points over the first two days of competition at state, bounced back to score 19 on Saturday placing 13th in the team standings.

The Glenwood girls opened their state track meet strong with a pair of medals from Jacy Embray and Linnaea Konfrst in the discus. Embray, a senior South Dakota recruit, placed third with a top toss of 128 feet, 5 inches while Konfrst, a junior, was seventh with a best throw of 123 feet, 1 inch.

Glenwood’s girls shuttle hurdle relay team of Olivia Scarborough, Ashley Konfrst, Molly Dean and Miranda Ruth was fifth in the prelims to reach Saturday’s finals. In Saturday’s finals, the Rams broke the school record and placed third in 1:06.52.

Courtney Magnussen ran a 13.12 to placed 15th in the 100-meter dash.
The Glenwood girls opened Friday strong once again with Embray winning a silver medal in the shot put with a top throw of 42 feet, 7 1/2 inches.

“Jacy and I have a great working relationship. She works so hard in practice and for her to go up there and come home with a silver and bronze is pretty special ending for her career here.”

Later on Friday, Molly Dean added  a seventh place finish  in the 400-meter hurdles and the Ram girls’ 4x200-meter relay team of Devon Bomer, Kaycee Clark, Courtney Magnussen and Dean placed 13th with a time of 1:47.11, the third fastest time in school history.

Rasmussen said his 4x100 and 4x400-meter relays both “ran well” against stacked competition. The 4x100-meter relay team of Ashley Konfrst, Clark, Miranda Ruth and Courtney Magnussen placed 23rd in 52.09. The 4x400-meter relay team of Ruth, Bomer, Clark and Dean also placed 23rd. The top eight teams in each event advanced to Saturday’s finals.

Miranda Ruth placed 17th in the 100-meter hurdles with a time of 16.14. The time broke Ruth’s own school record in the event.

Rasmussen said he wasn’t surprised by any one athlete or event at state. Every athlete that ran, contributed something, he said.

“Courtney Magnussen is a senior who has been a great leader and all around great runner,” Rasmussen said. “You have Ashley Konfrst who has really done so much with the consistency of our shuttle hurdle. Olivia Scarborough, Miranda Ruth and Molly (Dead) all gave such great effort. There’s Kaycee Clark, who had been an alternate for so long, getting her chance on the big blue oval at Drake and there’s Devon Bomer, who is a freshman that ran on two relays for us. Coming home with five medals like we did, you really can’t complain with what this group did.”

After  rough first two days at state, the Glenwood boys closed strong, medaling in all four events in Saturday’s finals to finish 13th with 21 team points.

“I was happy with how we finished,” said Glenwood boys coach Mark Starner. “We kind of thought we could do what we did but one of the things with starting out like we did, we knew we had a lot of opportunities in our preliminaries to get points in the finals.”

Dane Kruse had a particularly strong finals day, running a 14.76 to place third in the 110-meter high hurdles and running the anchor leg of the shuttle hurdle relay and the opening leg of the 4x100 and 4x400-meter relays.

Running without James Fuller, who missed the last two weeks of the season with a  foot injury, the Rams were without one of their top sprinters from 100 meters to 400 meters. Starner said his team rose to the occasion without Fuller and no more was that more evident than in Kruse’s strong running.

“He did a heck of a job. He’s been there all year for us in all of those events and with James going down he filled in on the 4x400 as the next best option and he was a big for us. He’s always ready to run with his athletic ability. This was a great way to cap his career.”

The Rams’ shuttle hurdle relay team of Blaine Clark, Caleb Petersen, Von Essen and Kruse ran a 58.41 for fourth place while the 4x100 team of Kruse, Lee, Jon Van Scoy and Decker placed seventh in 44.47.

Glenwood capped its four medal day with a third place showing in the 4x400-meter relay. Kruse, Petersen, Brogan Weddum and Von Essen combined for a time of 3:23.

On Thursday, the Rams’ Mavrick Decker, a qualifier in both the 100 and 200-meters, placed 11th and 19th, respectively, to just miss the finals in both.

Josh Lee added a 13th place showing in the 100-meter dash while the Rams 4x800-meter relay team of Jaron Springer, Victor Salerno, Seth Little and Andrew Blum placed 21st.

Dru Little added a 19th showing in the discus.

Friday saw the Rams score their first points at state when the boys 4x200-meter relay team of Brogan Weddum, Jon Van Scoy, Carter Von Essen and Decker ran a 1:31.05 to place seventh.

Kruse placed third in the 110-meter high hurdle preliminaries to reach Saturday’s final with a time of 14.56.

In the 400-meter hurdles, Carter Von Essen just missed out on medal placing ninth while teammate Caleb Petersen was 19th.

The Rams 4x100-meter relay team of Kruse, Josh Lee, Van Scoy and Decker placed seventh in the preliminaries to reach Saturday’s finals.

In the final event of the day Friday, the Rams’ 4x400-meter relay team of  Kruse, Petersen, Weddum and Von Essen placed second in their heat and fourth overall to advance to Saturday’s finals.

The boys’ distance medley relay placed 19th. Van Scoy, Zach Kirkpatrick, Weddum and Andrew Blum finished with a time of 3:44.48.