After seeing their invitational get canceled because of cold weather on Saturday, the Columbus North boys and girls track teams had a much more enjoyable climate in which to compete on Tuesday night.
The Bull Dog boys and girls teams picked up wins in a tri meet against Seymour and Brown County. Official team scores were not available at press time.
“I thought most of the kids came out and took really good advantage of (the weather),” North coach Rick Sluder said. “Saturday was obviously awful. I told them, ‘Here’s your chance kids,’ and we came out and ran really well, jumped well, threw well.”
Tucker Smith led the Bull Dog boys with wins in the shot put (68 feet, 11 1/2 inches) and discus (152-11). Other individual winners were Liam Phillips in the pole vault (8-6), Lwazi Mkhwanazi in the high jump (5-10), Cole Wheeler in the 110-meter hurdles (17.14 seconds), Keegan Castetter in the 100 (12.12), Matt Newell in the 1,600 (4:25.89), Noah Abfall in the 400 (54.43), Jack Wright in the 300 hurdles (42.80), Clayton Guthrie in the 800 (1:59.87), Nathan Imlay in the 200 (24.30) and Will Kiel in the 3,200. North also won the 4×100 (47.19) and 4×400 relays).
Sierra Newell won the pole vault (8-6) and long jump (15-11), and Natalie Ho took the 100 (13.66) and 200 (27.98) to lead the Bull Dog girls. Other winners were Moana Steele in the shot (36-7), Emma Martin in the discus (100-10) and Lily Baker in the 1,600 (5:12.79). North also won the 4×100 (52.70) and 4×400 relays.
“We worked hard,” Sluder said. “We were missing a few people tonight, so we had to fill some spots. We had a really good night, really competed well. We probably competed a little better tonight than we did against Bloomington South, even.”
Brown County’g girls got wins from Christy Sebastian in the 300 hurdles (51.23) and Hadley Gradolf in the 3,200.
“We have a smaller team this year with only 13 girls, but they came out and competed really well,” Brown County girls coach Jay Myers said. “Everything we put them, they stepped up and did the best they could. We had several personal-bests.”
The Eagle boys won the 4×800 relay in 8:36.34.
“I’m proud of the kids,” Brown County boys coach Kirk Wrightsman said. “We try to go against the biggest competition to get us ready for the end of the year. We definitely had some good performances.”
The meet originally was supposed to be a dual between North and Seymour, but Brown County, which was scheduled to compete in the North Invitational, was invited.
“I was proud of how they came here and competed,” Wrightsman said. “It was a great meet with good competition. It was unfortunate that Saturday, the weather happened like it did, but to have us come back over and be able to get this in was good.
