Some good relay results, improved distances in Gilman meet Tuesday

GILMAN TRACK & FIELD

The Gilman Pirates found some relay success and reached several season-best distances in field events during a sixteam meet held at their facility Tuesday.

The Pirates finished fourth in the girls meet with 83.5 points, beating Spencer (66) and Owen-Withee (3), while the boys put up 74 points to settle into fifthplace, well ahead of Prairie Farm (3). Colby won both meets. The Hornets scored 190 points in the girls competition to beat Prairie Farm (143.5) and Newman Catholic (84). Colby scored 199 points in the boys meet, followed by Newman Catholic (152.5), Spencer (94) and Owen-Withee (85.5).

In the boys meet, Gilman picked up a pair of relay wins. The 800-meter team of Troy Duellman, Andrew Hecker, Dominic Franzen and Branden Ustianowski dropped its time to a season-best 1:41.1 to win by 3.31 seconds over runner-up Owen- Withee. For the first time this spring, the Pirates put together a 1,600-meter team. Braeden Person, Duellman, Ustianowski and Hecker won that in 4:05.04, beating Spencer by 3.73 seconds.

Hecker earned two second-place finishes in field events. He cleared 5 feet, 6 inches in the high jump, winning a tiebreaker for the second spot over Spencer’s Cameron Nieman. Ustianowski was sixth at a season-best height of 5-2. Newman’s Charlie McCarty won at 6 feet. Hecker went 18-10.25 in the long jump, not far off his season-best of 19-1. Ustianowski set another personal record at 18-4.25, good for fifth place, and Adam Draeger was ninth at 12-9.5.

Junior Bryce Chovan took a big jump in the discus with his throw of 97-1 that put him in fourth place. Zack Marion took fifth in the shot put at 34-3, while Caleb Marion set a new personal-best at 29-2, good for 13th. Franzen went 34-1 to place fifth in the triple jump.

Back on the track, Franzen earned a pair of runner-up placements. He ran the 200-meter dash in 24.32 seconds, just 0.12 seconds behind winner Caden Healy of Colby. Duellman got the seventh-place points at 26.66 seconds. Franzen wasn’t far off his season-best time in the 110-meter high hurdles. His time of 19.65 seconds put him just 0.24 seconds behind Owen-Withee’s Logan Amacher.

Person tied for ninth in the 100-meter dash at 13.94 seconds, Quintin Franzen was 11th at 14.0 seconds and Draeger was 15th in 14.94 seconds.

Freshman Bailey Angell set new season- best marks in the shot put and discus in girls competition. She won the shot put with a toss of 32-8, surpassing her Friday throw at Cadott by 8.25 inches. Angell held a comfortable margin over Colby’s Katrina Gosse (30-6) and Malayna Rieck (30-0). Kaylee O’Malley improved to 26 feet even and tied Prairie Farm’s Sydney Junkans for fourth, 2 feet over the sixthplace throw from teammate Brooke Fryza. Emma Grunseth was 10th at 21-4.

Angell cracked 100 feet for the first time in the discus with a second-place throw of 101-10. Colby’s Rieck was the only one better at 107-5. Fryza (69-8) was sixth, O’Malley (63-0) was eighth and Grunseth (60-3) was 10th.

Gracie Tallier had another big meet, winning her sprints and taking third in the long jump at 14-6, 6.5 inches behind winner Trinity Severson of Colby. Tallier won the 100-meter dash in 13.49 seconds, 0.56 seconds ahead of Prairie Farm’s Makaylin Christenson. Tallier got Christenson again, this time by 1.15 seconds, with her 200-meter time of 28.19 seconds.

The girls got a relay win in the night’s final event, the 1,600-meter relay. Aubrey Syryczuk, Sophia Drier, Abby Krug and Ava Gunderson finished in 4:50.4, 15.14 seconds ahead of Spencer. Prairie Farm was a distant third at 5:08.55.

Krug added a third-place time of 7:08.37 in the 1,600-meter run. Drier set a seasonbest time of 2:46.69 in the 800-meter run, good for sixth place, while Krug was 12th at 3:11.07. Gunderson was sixth in the 400-meter dash at 1:08.88, while Syryczuk was eighth in 1:11.45. Gunderson added a fourth-place finish in the high jump by clearing 4-4. Christenson won that event by clearing 4-10.

Gilman will compete Tuesday in an eight-team meet in Abbotsford, which is scheduled to start at 4:30 p.m. The Pirates will be Stanley-Boyd two days later.