PT track girls place 5th, boys place 6th

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The Port Townsend High School track and field team’s girls finished fifth while its boys finished sixth at the 1A West Central District 3 championships May 18-19, which means at least half a dozen Redhawks are heading to state.

The top two finishers in each event qualified for the state championship meet, which is set to take place May 24-26 at Eastern Washington University in Cheney.

“Though our team is the smallest and least experienced that we’ve had in recent years, they certainly had a lot of performances of which to be proud at the meet,” PT coach Ian Fraser said. “They competed well and recorded another 10 personal bests in individual events.”

The Redhawks’ district champions included Aubry Botkin in the 100-meter hurdles, Nathan Cantrell in the 3,200-meter run and Dylan Tracer in the 300-meter hurdles.    

Botkin started the meet with a victory in the 100-meter hurdles, improving her own school record to 15.01 seconds.

“She needed most of that stellar time to notch her victory, as she was followed close to the line by Coupeville’s Lindsay Roberts in 15.26, a time that Aubry has only bested four times in her career,” Fraser said. “Aubry is entering the 100-meter hurdles championship looking for her first state title and hoping to become the second athlete of the decade in the Washington State 1A division to break the 15-second barrier for the event.”

In addition to the 100-meter hurdles, Botkin placed second in the 300-meter hurdles with a half-second personal record. She took second in the triple jump, too, in addition to running a leg on the second-place 4x100-meter relay team.

Fraser said Cantrell ran “a perfectly executed race from a tactical standpoint” in the 3,200-meter run.

Cantrell was racing Jarred Donnel, of Bellevue Christian High School, 1A’s sixth-ranked 3,200-meter runner. Fraser credited Cantrell with shadowing each of Donnel’s moves and “keeping the pace moving, any time Donnel tried to let it ease off.”

Moving into the the final lap, Cantrell made what Fraser deemed “an assertive surge” before unleashing “an impressive finishing kick” in the final 120 meters to defeat Donnel by more than a second.

Fraser said Tracer is “finally beginning to look comfortable over the barriers … after picking up the hurdles event midway through the season.”

In just the fourth hurdles race of his career, Tracer took the district championship title with 41.78 seconds, winning by 1.5 seconds and improving his personal best by almost a full second.

“Dylan’s improvement puts him as a legitimate finals contender for the event at the state championship,” Fraser said.

In addition to the 300-meter hurdles, Tracer threw the discus 122 feet, adding 11 feet to his best and narrowly nabbing the second and final state-qualifying berth in that event. 

Fraser explained that the girls’ 4x100-meter relay team of Botkin, Brenna Franklin, Anika Avelino and Eileen Leoso came into the meet “knowing they’d be in a close battle” with Bellevue Christian and Charles Wright Academy for the second and final slot to state in that event.

“Unfortunately, the team anchor leg severely aggravated a chronic knee issue at the school prom the previous weekend, and it was questionable as to whether or not she’d be able to compete even up to the start of the event,” Fraser said.

After narrowly missing out on a state berth with a third-place finish in the shot put, Leoso committed to trying to help get the relay team to state.

“The first three legs of the relay all ran fantastic segments, and the group put together the best set of exchanges that we’ve seen from them all year,” Fraser said. “Eileen took the baton for the anchor leg in second place, with a narrow lead over the expected contending teams. Though she was visibly pained and favoring her uninjured knee, Eileen ran with real guts and held on to second position, securing the relay team a berth to the state championships.”

In addition to the 4x100-meter relay, Avelino ran personal records in both the 400-meter (fourth place at 61.49) and 200-meter (27.52) and led off the fifth-place 4x400-meter relay team.

PT sophomore Sierra Ruegg did not quite make it to the league championship meet last year, but this year, she qualified for the district meet in both hurdles events and, in Fraser’s words, “even saved the best for last,” as she ran personal records in both the 100-meter hurdles (sixth place at 18.83) and 300-meter hurdles (sixth place at 53.58), as well as running legs on the fourth-place 4x200-meter relay and fifth-place 4x400-meter relay teams.