Over the course of three days at the Drake Relays, the Ankeny Centennial boys’ track team showed that the Jaguars will be a force at next month’s Class 4A state meet.
“I’m really confident in me and my teammates’ ability to come out and compete with the best of them,” said Centennial senior Braeden Jackson, who ran on the third-place 4×100 and seventh-place 4×400 relays on Saturday after anchoring the winning 4×200 relay to a meet record on Friday. “We’re excited to see where we stack up against the rest of the state.”
Ankeny, meanwhile, enjoyed both the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat at this year’s Relays. The Hawks defended their title in the 4×800 relay on Saturday, but had a tough weekend in the hurdles events.
“It was a little bit of a rollercoaster for us,” said Ankeny coach Jordan Mullen. “The positive is we have all our pieces now. We’ve just got to put that puzzle together!”
Standout distance runner Ethan Zuber, who anchored the winning 4×800 and placed in three other events, said he’s confident that the Hawks will contend for a second straight Class 4A crown.
“At the end of the day, the track team is a bunch of individuals coming together to compete as a team,” said Zuber. “That’s what it’s all about. That team camaraderie is really what we need going into this final month.”
Senior Cael Woods will likely be one of Centennial’s top threats to claim an individual state title. He placed second in the 400 hurdles on Saturday in 52.60 seconds, finishing behind a runner that won’t compete in Class 4A.
Woods entered the meet with the state’s fastest time of 53.18, but Nathan Miller of Center Point-Urbana eclipsed that mark by winning the second section of the race in 52.80. That put some pressure on the eight hurdlers in the final section.
“I knew I was going to have to run a little faster,” said Woods. “I was a little surprised with what (Miller ran), but that’s what Drake does to you. It really brings the best out of you.”
Woods got off to a fast start and led the final section most of the way. However, he was unable to hold off Gabe Funk of Lenox, who won the race in 52.40.
“I kind of hit the second hurdle with my off leg, and I stumbled a little,” Woods said. “But after that, I thought I ran really well. I really thought I was going to do it, but the ninth hurdle I stuttered and alternated and that’s what cost me the race.”
Zuber capped off his big weekend with a fourth-place finish in the 1,600. He posted a time of 4:10.69, while teammate Isaiah Smith took 18th in the same event in 4:23.84.
Quentin Nauman of Western Dubuque (Epworth) completed the distance triple by winning the 1,600 in 4:05.17, which set an all-time Iowa best.
“I was running a little more conservative on the first half,” Zuber said. “I was going to try to make my move with Nauman, just seeing how well he’s been running these past few days and how confident he’s been in his races. That was the game plan. It unfolded a lot like how you saw the other ones unfold this week. Nauman let someone else lead it, and then he just hammered it with about 400 to go. He outhammered us again.”
Nauman surged past Caleb Ten Pas of Des Moines Christian on the bell lap and went on to run the final 400 in 56.24 seconds. Ten Pas was the runner-up in 4:07.70.
“It’s nasty,” Zuber said of Nauman’s closing kick. “He’s got the aerobic fitness to stay up there and the 800 speed to really kick it in. He’s a very talented kid.”
Both Ankeny and Centennial advanced to the final in the 4×100 relay. Johnston won the race in 41.84, edging Cedar Rapids Kennedy by .05 seconds.
Jackson teamed up with Noah Ross, Robert McGhee and Caleb Reed to post a time of 42.03 seconds.
“We come in to every race thinking that (we can win),” Jackson said. “Credit to Johnston and Kennedy. They came out and handled business. But it’s great to compete. We feel like we have a good chance at state.”
The Hawks placed fourth in 42.12. The foursome of Finn McClure, Alexander Zuber, Treyton Grossman and Tyler Sickerson had posted the fastest qualifying time of 42.09 earlier in the day.
“We’ve just been progressing,” said Sickerson. “We started the season with (a time of) 43-high, then went to 42-mid and now we’re running 42-lows consistently. We know we’ll be there at state.”
It’s been a long road back to the blue oval for Sickerson, who suffered an injury at last year’s Relays and was not able to run when Ankeny dominated the state meet a month later. He is still not 100 percent.
“I feel amazing right now, to be honest,” the Northern Iowa recruit said. “It’s just an opportunity to be back out here. At the beginning of the year, I didn’t think I’d even be out here competing. It’s just a blessing.
“I’m not quite all the way back, but I’m getting there though. I’ll be there by state,” he added.
Centennial later closed out the meet by posting a time of 3:20.20 in the 4×400 relay. The quartet of Jackson Reed, McGhee, Woods and Jackson had run about a second faster during Friday’s preliminaries, when Ankeny finished 23rd overall in 3:29.31.
In the final, Reed and McGhee had a shaky handoff on the first exchange. McGhee then dealt with a lot of traffic when he handed the baton to Jackson.
“I’m pretty new to these 400s,” McGhee said. “It’s definitely a new experience.”
Johnston got a strong anchor leg from Jashua Anglo to win the race in 3:15.98.
The Jaguars also earned an eighth-place finish in the 4×800 relay. The team of Cohen Moll, Jack Behrens, Brayden Vander Wilt and Corbin Vander Weerdt posted a time of 7:56.58.
Moll ran the opening leg in 1:56.78, putting his team into fifth place.
While Ankeny won that event, the Hawks didn’t fare as well in the shuttle hurdle relay. After setting a Drake Relays record of 57.44 seconds in the preliminaries earlier in the day, the team of Landon Pote, Sam Madsen, Hayden Carlson and Gavin Wise was disqualified in the final.
Carlson was battling for the lead on the third leg with Kennedy’s Dallas Keller when he stumbled over a hurdle, ending Ankeny’s bid for the title. The Cougars also tripped on a hurdle on the final leg, allowing Waukee Northwest to rally for the victory.
The Wolves broke the Relays record and ran an all-time Iowa best of 56.82.
“As a hurdles guy myself, you always take that risk of having a rough meet or race and now we should have all of them out of the way,” said Mullen, who also had two athletes DQ’d in the 110 hurdles on Friday. “I don’t know if we were going to be able to beat Kennedy, but it was going to be one heck of a show at the finish line if we had both stayed up. We have some fine-tuning to do, but we know how good we can be in those races!
“It wasn’t the weekend they wanted, but it’s going to keep them really hungry moving forward. We have had a lot of adversity to overcome this year so we are going to keep climbing that mountain back to the top!” he added.
