Falcons earn second straight win in Stanley
By Nathaniel Underwood
The Abbotsford girls team earned their second straight team victory last Friday evening in Stanley-Boyd, defeating nine other schools and holding a 30-point lead over the second-place Orioles squad as they finished with 114.50 points. The Falcon boys took fifth overall at Stanley-Boyd, ending the day with 49.50 points.
The girls had five individual event victories at the meet. Azul Diaz accounted for two of those wins herself, the junior distance runner winning the two longest races of the evening. She took the top spot in the 1600-meter run, finishing with a four second lead over Brianna Sheahan of Athens and a time of 5:56.98. The Bluejays’ runner was also Diaz’s closest competition in the 3200-meter run, but the distance between the two was much greater as Diaz maintained a 42-second margin of victory in the event. She ended with a season best time of 12:37.85 in the event.
Oriah Harris also had a win for the Falcons on the track, taking first place in the 200-meter dash. The freshman edged out Neillsville’s Kaylee Lawrence by three-tenths of a second to win the race, finishing with a time of 27.20. In addition to her first place finish in the 200-meter dash, Harris also had a second place finish in the long jump with a distance of 15 feet, eight-and-three-quarters inches, a fourth place finish in the 400-meter dash with a time of 1:07.56 and a seventh place in the the 100-meter hurdles, which she completed in 18.85 seconds.
Margo Pogodzinski and Sydney Falteisek led Abbotsford’s efforts in the field events. Pogodzinski had the best throw of the day in the discus, measuring 111 feet and beating out Cadott’s Haley Mathison’s best throw by two feet. Falteisek, meanwhile, shared her title in the high jump as she, Bethany Pilgrim of Stanley-Body and Anne Siegenthaler of McDonell Central all cleared the bar at a height of four feet, eight inches.
The 4x100-meter relay and the 4x800-meter relay teams both picked up second place finishes for the Falcons. The sprint relay of Hazel Flink, Briseida Escalera, Riley Podevels and Faith Sperl put up a time of 57.21 seconds to take the runner-up spot in their event while distance runners Diaz, Iris Cruz, Celia Schindler and Ana Flores completed the 4x800-meter relay in 11:11.06.
Cruz added an individual fourth place finish in the 800-meter run, posting a time of 2:41.47. Falteisek had two more fourths for the Falcons, recording times of 13.66 seconds in the 100-meter dash and 51.93 seconds in the 300-meter hurdles to earn the spots.
Other top-eight finishes included a fifth place finish in the shot put by Pogodzinski, sixths courtesy of Chloe Cihlar in the 200-meter dash, Schindler in the triple jump and Sommer Brodhagen in the discus, a seventh for Cihlar in the 100-meter dash and an eighth place finish for Marilyn Hammock in the same event.
The 4x100-meter relay team of Alex Sundermeyer, Emmanuel Manzanarez, Chase Boller and Irvin Aguilera had the top result for Abbotsford’s boys team on Friday. They took second in the event, narrowly defeating McDonell Central’s third place team with a time of 48.51.
Boller and Christian Fuentes had a pair of third place finishes for the Falcons. Boller earned his spot in the high jump by clearing a height of five feet, eight inches while Fuentes did so in the 400-meter dash with a time of 56.23 seconds.
Boller added a fifth place finish in the triple jump to his resume, his furthest jump measuring 37 feet, three-and-a-half inches. Marcus VanLuven also had a fifth place finish for Abbotsford, doing so in the discus. His best throw of the day traveled 107 feet, seven inches. He also had a seventh place finish in the shot put with a throw of 36 feet, six inches. Teammate Edwin Cossio Aguilera came out just ahead of VanLuven in the event as Cossio Aguilera claimed sixth with a throw of 36 feet, seven inches Jack Schindler had a pair of sixths in the 1600-meter and 3200-meter runs, posting times of 5:02.08 and 11:38.86 in the two events respectively, and a seventh place finish in the 800-meter run with a time of 2:24.07.
Sundermeyer and Warren Flink rounded out the top-eight performances from the Falcons with eighth place finishes in the 100-meter dash and the pole vault. Sundermeyer earned his spot in the former with a time of 12.09 seconds and Flink claimed his place in the latter by clearing a height of 10 feet.
