9 EVENTS, 6 MEDALS, 2 ALMOSTS

WIAA STATE TRACK & FIELD CHAMPIONSHIPS

Angell nearly wins shot; Tallier sprints to 4th in the 100

Bailey Angell went from the bottom to nearly winning the shot put competition, plus she earned her second career medal in the discus, while Gracie Tallier got her first medal in the 100-meter dash and nearly got a second in the 200-meter dash during a strong weekend for the Gilman Pirate standouts at the WIAA Division 3 state track and field championships at UW-La Crosse.

The duo compiled 18 team points with their placements, which all ranged between second and seventh place, good for a 14th-place tie with Shiocton and Fennimore in the final team standings. Return- ing to state in the same events as a year ago, they combined to improve in three of the four with Angell still earning a discus medal despite dropping two places from her freshman season to sixth place.

Angell needed just one throw to put herself into championship contention in the shot put, a year after she tied Shayna Graf of River Ridge for last place in the 2021 state competition. Both sophomores returned and did much better this time around.

On her first throw Friday afternoon, Angell got a mark of 38 feet, 6.25 inches that put her in first place through the first round of flight two competition. She fell to second place in round two after senior Monraye Ermis of Manitowoc Lutheran got one out to 38-11. Ermis would later extend her lead to 39-1.25 in the finals and won the state championship.

Angell struggled the rest of the way, fouling on her next four throws before getting a legal mark of 35-10.25 on her last throw of the finals. But that first one stood as the second-best throw of the day, a quarter-inch ahead of her regional and sectional rival Tori Thorp of Ladysmith, who hit 38-6 on her third preliminary throw.

“I did everything right on the first one,” Angell said. “I just kind of took it easy so that I get a good one in.”

With that throw certainly putting her in the finals, Angell may have started trying too hard to get one out even further.

“Once I started giving ‘er, I started getting on my nerves, it came off my hand bad, or I’d drop my elbow, or overstepped or hit the toe board,” she said. “It was pretty much everything.”

Angell said it was exciting to throw more than 6 feet further than she did at state last year, when she and Graf both threw 32-4.75. She was a little off her personal best of 39-8, set May 9 at Edgar, but has full belief she’ll get there when it counts in the future.

“The way that I’ve been practicing the last couple of weeks, I’ve been hitting 39s and 40s, but then I dislocated my finger from it coming off wrong,” she said. “That placed me back a little bit and I’m just now getting over that injury. So it’s kind of a bad way to end my season, but still not bad for a sophomore.”

The top seed entering the competition, Ellie Juergensen of Living Word Lutheran, placed fourth at 38-4, while Paige Kurlinski of Ozaukee (38-1.25) and Jeanette Hydukovich of Colfax (37-6.25) also earned medals. Graf was eighth at 36-10.5, just behind Rosholt’s Payton Skortz (37-1.25).

While the shot put competition took place under warm, sunny skies on Friday, things were much different for the discus competition Saturday morning with temperatures sitting at about 60 with wind and light rain. The moisture, Angell said, affected all the competitors.

“You had to dry off the ring every single time,” she said. “Then half the time your shoes still slip even though you’ve dried off the ring and dried off your shoes.”

Still, there were some impressive throws in the preliminaries. None of the finalists improved their marks in the finals.

Throwing in the first flight amongst a stronger field than last year, Angell hit just 94-10 on her first preliminary attempt, but then got off the one that would put her on the medals stand. It went 112-11, which was 4 feet off her personal best, but 8 inches better than her sectional distance and her second-best finishing distance of the spring.

“Definitely after my first one I tried to take it a little bit easier,” Angell said. “Just get a good one in. Try to get my technique down. Then after that I kind of was like well, I know that I got finals. If I got finals, maybe I can push another one, but I didn’t really need to push one.”

Angell’s best throw in the finals carried 107-4.

The stars of the competition were Colby’s Malayna Rieck, Drummond’s Nora Skoraczewski and Colfax’s Jeanette Hydukovich, all throwers Angell has met along the way during the season. Rieck took the lead with her first throw of 122-9, extended that lead to 126-8 on her second throw and stayed there to take the championship. Skoraczewski’s first throw went 122-2, put her in the lead briefly and gave the sophomore the second-place medal. Hydukovich got one out to 122 feet even on her first throw. That gave her third place.

Jayla Nagel, a junior from Kickapoo-LaFarge, took fourth at 118-7 and Coleman sophomore Kiersten Jensen was fifth at 118-1. With Rieck being the only senior among the medal winners, the competition in this event could be something to watch again next year.

“It feels good (to medal in both events) especially knowing that I was on the under side last year with shot put and now getting second,” Angell said. “For discus the ring was pretty slippery for everybody. You could tell people were slipping. To still come down and get sixth and yet be more toward the bottom with the stacked bracket, it’s pretty good. If I keep working like I did last year, we should be fine. Just keep doing better every year for sure, especially knowing that my best is better in shot now after I switched to a turn style. If I keep going I should be fine.”

Tallier sprints to podium

Tallier put last year’s disappointing 17th-place finish in the 100-meter dash well into the rearview mirror, jumping all the way to fourth in both Friday’s preliminaries and Saturday’s final.

“I’ve always wanted to be up there, it’s such an accomplishment,” Tallier said of getting to the podium. “Just from last year, not really being where I wanted and then to get fourth, it’s getting somewhere. Now I have one more year.”

The junior was right at her school-record pace (12.6) in Friday’s preliminaries, officially coming at 12.62 seconds, which was good for second place in the second heat behind Deerfield’s Steffi Siewert (12.53). Kendall Hagness of Durand, who Tallier has gotten to know well the past couple of springs, won the first heat in 12.57 seconds and Dodgeland’s Miranda Firari was second at 12.58 seconds.

Being the fourth seed in the final put her in lane seven in Saturday’s final, right between Hagness in lane five and another familiar foe from this season, Morgan Schnelle from Edgar in lane eight.

“I’ve beaten Kendall a few times this year, so we just have that competition going and you just want to be right next to her. Morgan too,” she said.

Times were a bit slower for everyone in the final. Hagness powered her way to the championship in 12.72 seconds, 0.09 seconds ahead of Firari. Siewert took third in 13.03 seconds while Tallier and Schnelle were both clocked at 13.1 seconds. A closer look gave Tallier fourth place in 13.091 seconds, while Schnelle was still at 13.1 seconds.

“My time was definitely better in the first race, probably just because of the weather,” Tallier said. “It was just nicer out and I had a better warm-up.”

But, Saturday was more about competing for place, rather than time.

“You just need a good start in the beginning because you can’t come back from a bad start,” she said. “Then it goes so fast. You just try to think about your form.”

Tallier was a finalist in last spring’s 200-meter dash final and took ninth in 27.8 seconds.

This time around, she made the finals with a preliminary time of 26.45 seconds, which ranked ninth among the 10 finalists. Firari (25.89) and Hagness (25.95) again topped the field. Running in lane one, Tallier used a strong burst to bump her way up to seventh place in the final with a time of 26.83 seconds. Again, the times were a tad slower for everyone Firari was the champion at 26.07 seconds, followed by Hagness (26.27), Schnelle (26.32) and Alyssa Husker of Riverdale (26.57). Tallier was 0.19 seconds away from a medal as Siewert took sixth in 26.64 seconds, just behind Haili Brone of Cochrane-Fountain City (26.6).

Tallier said it was something special for Angell and herself to both bring home some hardware.

“It’s awesome because we work so hard at practice,” she said. “It’s good to have it pay off.”

Gilman’s Gracie Tallier (l.) proudly wears her first WIAA track and field medal after placing fourth in Saturday’s Division 3 100-meter dash final, and Bailey Angell accepts her runner-up medal after Friday’s shot put competition.MATT FREY/THE STAR NEWS