Gilman’s sprint speed shows in season-opening Neillsville meet

NEILLSVILLE INDOOR MEET

Some of the Gilman Pirates’ highest hopes for the 2022 track and field season are pinned on sprints and that potential showed in Tuesday’s season-opening indoor meet at Neillsville.

Gracie Tallier, Claire Drier and Dominic Franzen all earned victories in 45-meter races and Tallier and Franzen also won two-lap sprints as the girls finished third and the boys took fifth in a meet that featured six Eastern Cloverbelt Conference teams. The girls scored 58 points to trail Loyal (170) and Neillsville (88) while finishing ahead of Spencer (42), Greenwood (33) and Granton (23).

Tallier won both sprints and Drier took first place in the 45-meter hurdles in her first varsity meet. Tallier’s first win was in the 45-meter dash final in 6.55 seconds. She beat Loyal’s Aubre Robida by 0.32 seconds. Gilman freshman Jaylen Copenhaver was fifth in 7.16 seconds. Tallier (6.68) and Copenhaver (7.3) were first and sixth out of 37 entrants in the preliminaries. The top eight made the final.

Tallier then won the 234-meter, twolap sprint in 36.72 seconds, a time that put her comfortably ahead of runner-up Leah Scherer of Loyal (38.12). No one else was under 40 seconds.

Drier’s win in the hurdles final came with a time of 9.02 seconds that beat Loyal’s Abrial Kubista by 0.04 seconds. Drier had finished second in the preliminaries at 9.14 seconds, 0.02 seconds behind Kubista. But Drier got Kubista with a late surge through the last hurdle in the final.

Drier picked up her first varsity win in the long jump at the start of the meet. She went 15 feet, 7 inches on her second attempt out of four and that was enough to beat 16 other competitors, including Tallier, who went 15-6.5 on her last jump to take second. Copenhaver added an eighth-place distance of 13-1.25.

Claire Drier, Copenhaver, Ellie Drier and Tallier added eight more sprint points by taking second in the four-lap relay at 1:13.47. Loyal won handily in 1:09.47, but Gilman was solidly ahead of third-place Neillsville, who finished in 1:18.95.

Gilman senior Emma Grunseth came up one place shy of scoring in the shot put, taking seventh with a throw of 24-5. Loyal’s Haven Peroshek won at 30-4.

The boys scored 49 points to easily beat Granton (4). Neillsville won the meet with 121 points, followed by Spencer (94), Greenwood (66.5) and Loyal (56.5).

Franzen, a senior, had a big meet with his two sprint wins and a solid first-ever varsity showing in the shot put.

He started his day by taking fourth in the shot put competition with a throw of 34-4 that was the best distance among the five Pirates who entered the event. Senior Zack Marion got the sixth-place point at 33-8.5 on his first attempt. Sophomore Caleb Marion was eighth at 32-4.5, senior Bryce Chovan was 11th at 27-6.5 and senior Gabe Brunner debuted in 13th place at 25-4.

Franzen then ran the 45-meter dash preliminary in a first-place time of 5.99 seconds and he duplicated that time to win the final by 0.1 seconds over Spencer’s Noah Schultz. Later on, Franzen took the two-lap sprint in 33.0 seconds to easily beat runner-up Parker Smith of Loyal by 3.03 seconds. Sophomore Quintin Franzen was fifth in 36.74 seconds.

Quintin Franzen just missed getting one of the spots in the 45-meter hurdles final, taking fifth in the prelims at 8.73 seconds, 0.36 seconds behind fourth-place finisher Christian Thomas of Greenwood. Neillsville’s Landon Kummer won the final in 7.82 seconds.

Also in the 45-meter dash preliminaries, Pirate junior Braeden Person was 16th in 6.59 seconds, just ahead of Troy Duellman (6.67).

The rest of Gilman’s points came in relays.

Duellman, Person, Brady McAlpine and Dominic Franzen took second in the four-lap relay at 1:06.79. They were behind Spencer (1:05.69) and ahead of Neillsville (1:14.16). The eight-lap relay team of Chovan, Zack Marion, Caleb Marion and Brunner got the third-place points in 2:35.53 and finished behind Neillsville (2:20.45), Spencer A (2:20.63) and Spencer B (2:22.6).

Duellman, Quintin Franzen, Person and McAlpine finished the meet by taking third in the 12-lap relay at 3:52.44. Neillsville won in 3:40.07, while Spencer was just ahead of Gilman in 3:51.52. Greenwood (3:56.39) and Loyal (4:07.89) were fourth and fifth.

Both Pirate teams were missing some athletes due to the school’s band concert.

Gilman is back in action Saturday at UW-Stout’s Small School Northern Badger Invitational, which starts at 9 a.m.