Colby track shifts to outdoor season in Altoona

By Nathaniel Underwood

The Colby Hornets participated in a pair of meets over the past week, with both squads opening their outdoor season in Altoona on Monday evening while the girls team wrapped up their indoor campaign with a meet at Wausau West last Thursday.

Altoona Invitational

Facing off against athletes from 11 different schools in Altoona, the Colby girls took eighth place with 54 points while the boys squad took ninth with 28 points. Prescott took first place in both competitions, with the girls taking first with 119.17 points and the boys team leading all schools with 167.50 points.

The girls’ scores were split relatively evenly between the track and the field, with the team gathering 30 points in the running events while putting up 24 points in the throws and jumps.

Daelyn Rieck claimed two first place finishes on Monday, topping both the shot put and discus events. The sophomore’s hold over both events was not really challenged, as she cruised to a five-and-a-half foot victory in the shot put with a throw of 38 feet, six inches and a nearly 20 foot margin in the discus with a throw of 119 feet, two inches.

Pearl Feiten had two solid individual performances of her own, grabbing a second place finish in the 800-meter run and taking fourth in the 400-meter dash. She narrowly beat out Sylvia Spangler of Eau Claire Regis for the runner-up spot in the 800-meter run, defeating her by mere thousandths of a second with a time of 2:38.63. She was close to breaking into the top-three in the 400-meter dash with her time of 1:04.58 only a few tenths of a second off the pace of Altoona’s Ava Gunderson, who placed third.

Jazmyn Heeg added a pair of fifths for the Hornets. In a tightly contested 100-meter dash, the senior sprinter put up a time of 14.06 seconds and in the 200-meter dash she finished in 28.64 seconds.

Veronica Mateer also had a fifth place finish in Altoona, doing so in the triple jump. Her longest attempt measured 30 feet, three inches, just short of her longest jump in Wausau the week prior.

Casey Reynolds and Ali Adams both scored in the longest individual races of the day, with Reynolds taking sixth in the

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FAST LAP - Jazmyn Heeg quickly looks to complete her leg of the sprint medley event recently held in Wausau.

STAFF PHOTO/NATHANIEL UNDERWOOD Colby track

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1600-meter run with a time of 5:59.50 and Adams placing eighth in the 3200-meter run with a time of 14:30.56.

Adams was also part of the 4x800-meter relay team, which took fourth place. She and teammates Kaitlyn Weiland, Alexis Vanderhoof and Jenelle Ertl put up a time of 12:35.00 in the event, narrowly edging out Altoona’s squad for the fourth spot.

The field events carried the boys’ team, with all but four points coming from such events.

Seth Hopperdietzel and Erik Martinez led the way for the Hornets. Hopperdietzel tied the school record he set earlier in the season by once again reaching 13 feet, six inches in the pole vault, cruising to the top spot in the event. The senior’s next closest opponent was three feet behind him, with Fall Creek’s Levi Atkins finishing at a height of 10 feet, six inches.

Meanwhile, Martinez had one of his best performances of 2024 in the shot put. His best throw of the day measured 41 feet, five inches, a toss that was only beaten by Prescott’s Josh Peterson and earned him the runner-up spot in the event.

Rolyn Hopperdietzel added a fifth place finish in the triple jump, his furthest attempt measuring 37 feet, six inches and Xander Buchanan tied with five other athletes for fifth in the high jump, clearing a height of five feet, two inches.

Max Adams had the only individual scoring performance for the Hornets on the track. The senior took eighth in the 3200-meter run with a time of 11:12.61 and was also part of the 4x800-meter team that claimed sixth. He and teammates Bryan Camargo, Jacob Raatz and Tucker Hayes finished with a time of 9:29.20 and were the only other Colby entrants to score in a running event for the Hornets.

Wausau West Girls Invite

The girls squad wrapped up their indoor season last week with a trip to Wausau West on Thursday afternoon. The Hornets placed eighth out of the 14 schools present, scoring 34 points total. Wausau West took first with 152.50 points, Wittenberg- Birnamwood was second with 103 points and Bonduel placed third with 80 points.

Twelve of the Hornets’ 34 points came via relay events, with the 4x800-meter, the 4x400-meter and the sprint medley relays all scoring for Colby. The 4x800-meter team of Annamarie Schmitt, Casey Reynolds, Ali Adams and Pearl Feiten opened the meet with one of the Hornets’ better finishes, taking fourth place in the event. Coming in with a time of 10:39.50, they were just off the pace of the Shawano Community relay, which took third place with a time of 10:31.80.

The sprint medley team of Jazmyn Heeg, Tori Underwood, Alexis Vanderhoof and Feiten placed first in their heat and fifth overall in their event, recording a time of 2:58.18, and the 4x400-meter relay of Kaitlyn Weiland, Veronica Mateer, Vanderhoof and Adams took sixth with a time of 5:18.97.

Colby also had four more scoring performances on the track. Reynolds came through with a third place finish in the 1600-meter run, putting up a time of 6:11.80 to claim the Hornets top individual finish in the distance running events. Jazmyn Heeg had the second fastest time in the preliminaries of the 55-meter dash and took sixth overall with a time of 8.15 seconds in the finals. Feiten and Makenna Herrmann both added eighth place finishes, with the former doing so in the 800-meter run with a time of 2:56.30 and the latter scoring in the 200-meter hurdles with a time of 36.30 seconds.

In the field events, Daelyn Rieck added another first place finish to her resume, claiming the top spot in the shot put for the Hornets once again. The sophomore blew away much of her competition in the preliminary rounds, her longest throw of 38 feet measuring four-and-a-half feet further than her next closest opponent.

She put even more distance between herself and her peers in the finals, where she had her best throw of the season. Her toss of 39 feet, four-and-a-quarter inches was about six inches further than her prior season-high and sealed her third victory in the shot put in 2024.

Mateer had the only other field event scoring performance for Colby on Thursday. The junior also set a seasonal best, adding over a foot to her prior 2024 best by recording a leap of 30 feet, six-and-a-quarter inches to grab eighth place.

The Hornets are back in action on Thursday, when they travel to Medford for their second outdoor competition of 2024. The meet is to begin at 4 p.m.

WINNING THROW - Daelyn Rieck launches her final throw of the day in Wausau, solidifying her first place finish in the shot put.

STAFF PHOTO/NATHANIEL UNDERWOOD

NEED FOR SPEED - Zeline Lintrup cruises around the corner during the 4x160-meter relay at Wausau West last Thursday.

STAFF PHOTO/NATHANIEL UNDERWOOD