The Ankeny and Ankeny Centennial girls’ track teams each won one event and tied for sixth place overall in the CIML Conference meet on Thursday at Ankeny Stadium.
The Hawkettes and Jaguars both finished with 83 points.
“We were so excited about the competitive spirit that our team showed,” said Ankeny coach TJ Jumper. “It was just a grind-it-out type of meet. We had to make several tough decisions because of the circumstances related to the timing of this meet. Pertaining to training, it is not possible to be physically ready to PR for four straight weeks so we decided to put our training focus on having solid performances at Drake and then being ultimately ready for state qualifying and state. Therefore, we set up to train through conference.
“We will start our peak cycle of training next week and be ready to go in the upcoming weeks. We also have a couple kids sick and a couple we rested because of some nagging injuries so that they would be ready for next week. In addition, there is the Ankeny Derby on Friday so we did not want our soccer players who also run track to have a full load so that they didn’t go into the game tired,” he added.
Centennial coach Tyler Asbe took a similar approach to the meet.
“We were really happy with the effort our girls showed,” said Asbe. “We had some great performances and PRs in a range of events which was great to see! We had some girls with very heavy workloads and others that stayed light. It was a balance of being competitive and also preparing for the next few weeks and ensuring they are prepared for their potential schedules at state qualifying and state. It was an awesome meet overall for our squad!”
Waukee Northwest captured the team title with 127 points. Waukee was the runner-up in the nine-team field with 99, edging Johnston by a point.
Ankeny got a victory from Reagan Hanfelt in the high jump. She cleared the bar at 5 feet 2 inches to defend her title, while Centennial’s Anna Woods took third with a jump of 5-0.
The Jaguars’ lone win came in the 4×800 relay. The foursome of Ellie Blevins, Julia Flick, Kylee Patterson and Bella Hodges posted a time of 9:31.22.
The Hawkettes placed third in that event in 9:34.99. That team consisted of Makenna Madetzke, Drew Beason, Sophia Graber and Lauren Jackson.
Beason was the runner-up in 1,500 in 4:43.78, while Madetzke took fourth in the 800 in 2:20.01. The Jaguars got a third-place finish in the 1,500 from Anika Mohrhauser, who posted a time of 4:46.85.
Ankeny’s Jayla Williams placed second in the long jump with a leap of 17 feet 6.5 inches. Centennial’s Kambria Leazer jumped 17-3.25 and finished third, while Ava Leinen jumped 16-9.25 and took fourth for the Hawkettes.
Williams added a third-place finish in the 100 hurdles. She posted a time of 15.23 seconds.
Centennial’s Kylin Smith took second in the 400 hurdles in a time of 1:05.57. She also anchored the Jaguars to a seventh-place finish in the 4×400 relay, allowing them to finish nearly 3 seconds ahead of eighth-place Ankeny and moving her team into a tie with the Hawkettes in the overall standings.
Haley Hveem placed fourth for the Jaguars in the 3,000. She was clocked in 10:41.00.
Ankeny’s Alli Macke took fourth in the 400 in 58.54 seconds. Teammate Ava Tomlinson finished fourth in the discus with a throw of 112-1.
“Training-wise, our team is in a great place right now and our performances showed that even though we were not able to go at full strength like we will in the upcoming meets,” Jumper said. “There are a couple areas we need to solidify and clean up but to hit on all cylinders, we are excited for the next two weeks.”