The Port Townsend track and field teams performed well at the state championship meet May 25-27 in Tacoma.

The boys placed third of the 45 scoring teams at the 1A state championship, behind King’s and Deer Park, and the girls placed 25th of 41 scoring teams, according to coach Ian Fraser.

“Sophomore Aubry Botkin had a rough meet last year,” Fraser said. “She had entered the meet as an expected top-five placer in the 100-meter hurdles, but had some troubles with her rhythm trying to hurdle into a stiff headwind, and crashed badly over one of the last hurdles.”

Fraser credited Botkin with making “significant improvements” this year, to both her basic speed and the technical aspects of her hurdling, and she again came in as the second-seeded hurdler.

“With a light tailwind in the preliminary round, she easily outran the other girls in her heat,” Fraser said. “She looked technically sound, but she also seemed to lack a little of the normal pop in her stride.”

While Fraser had hoped that was due to having just completed a hard leg of the 4-x-200 meter relay, and that she’d rebound well for the finals on Saturday, May 27, she was met with a moderately strong headwind blowing up the stretch.

“Aubry executed a sound race,” Fraser said. “Though it tends to be a weaker portion of her race, over the final three hurdles, Aubry pulled well away from the third and fourth competitors to secure second place.”

About halfway through the season, Fraser had decided to run the boys’ 4-x-100 meter relay team without PT’s fastest 100-meter runner, who would be entered in other events.

That left Kyle Blankenship as the only returning member from last year’s second-place 4-x-100 meter relay team.

While neither he nor the three senior track rookies of Gerry Coker, Berkley Hill and Erik Pokorny had even qualified for the individual 100-meter to the district championship level, they came into the state championship with the eighth-best time in the state.

“We figured that they had about a 50-50 chance of making the finals, which they did,” Fraser said. “In the finals, however, they exceeded our expectations, and came up for an over-seed sixth-place finish.”

Fraser rated PT’s “other big storyline” as the continuation of Seren Dances’ senior season.

As a junior, he had made the finals of the state championship in the 100-meter, 200-meter, long jump and 4-x-100 meter relay, and came home with three medals.

AIMING TO WIN

“On the drive home from Cheney, Seren expressed a strong desire to win an event this year,” Fraser said. “In our discussions, we decided that he had all the tools necessary to win the hurdles, and that the diversification of training needed there, and the elimination of the triple jump from his competitive schedule, might help him to avoid some of the back problems that he’d struggled with throughout his sophomore and junior years.”

Dances then set himself to watching video to learn the technical aspects of hurdling, and hit the weight room to improve his power and build up his body, to prepare for more rigorous training.

“The work paid off immediately, as he set his first individual school record in the long jump at his first meet of the season,” Fraser said. “Throughout the season, he set additional school records in the triple jump, 110-meter hurdles and 200-meter, and was a member of the school record-setting 4-x-200 meter relay team. “Though he encountered a few minor injuries through the season, due to the tremendous base he’d built up over the winter, he was able to coast through those periods without losing significant fitness.”

Entering the postseason, Fraser committed Dances to the long jump, 110-meter hurdles, 300-meter hurdles and triple jump.

“Unfortunately, one of his minor injuries was picked up two days before the league championship meet, from a misstep on a long jump approach rehearsal,” Fraser said.

Through both the league and the district championship meets, Dances tried to qualify with as little exertion as necessary, while getting in what auxiliary training he could that wouldn’t aggravate his injuries.

“Going into the state championship, we felt pretty good about his long jump, but having raced hard over the 300-meter hurdles only once before, and only three times over the 110-meter hurdles, we knew that, while he had the ability to win both, there were still technical issues that could catch him in either one,” Fraser said.

The coach described the triple jump as “kind of a wild card,” in which he avoided having Dances compete beyond what was strictly necessary, avoided specific training, and tried to have him “just get by” with his general physical conditioning, the technical know-how he’d picked up over the previous two years of competition, and the “countless hours” of video he’d studied.

“It all turned out pretty well for Seren at the state championship in the end,” Fraser said.

On Thursday, May 25, Dances set a school record of 39.53, and become a top qualifier in the preliminary round of the 300-meter hurdles.

On May 26, Dances overcame what Fraser deemed “a rough start” to come up for second in his heat of the 110-meter hurdles prelims, and “despite trouble finding the board,” a second-place finish in the triple jump with 44-9 3/4.

Saturday, May 27, started with a win in the long jump on Dances’ second jump of the competition, at 22-9, after which he immediately had to check out to compete in the finals of the 110-meter hurdles.

“He trailed early and never found a good rhythm, but pulled way late in the race to win by three-tenths of a second in 15.42 with a -2.8 m/s headwind,” Fraser said. “After a couple of hours of rest, he came to the start line for the final race of his high school career, and made it a good one.”

Dances ran even with his competitors through the first two-thirds of the race, then pushed hard for the finish over the final two hurdles, pulling away to win by three-quarters of a second, in a new school record of 39.30 seconds.

With three firsts and a second, Dances scored 38 points, the most of any competitor in the meet by 11 points.

Also competing in the state championships for Port Townsend were:

Nathan Cantrell – 3,200-meter, 12th place

Berkley Hill – 200-meter, 12th place

Gerry Coker – 400-meter, 14th place

Boys’ 4-x-400 meter relay team of Kyle Blankenship, Dylan Tracer, Berkley Hill and Gerry Coker – 11th place

Erik Pokorny – discus, 16th place

Girls’ 4-x-200 meter relay team of Aubry Botkin, Anika Avelino, Ari Winter and Sira Wines – 16th place

Aubry Botkin – triple jump, 11th place

Brenna Franklin – discus, 15th place

Sira Wines – high jump, 16th place; javelin 17th place