Falcons start outdoor season with trip to Altoona
Bv Nathaniel Underwood
The Abbotsford Falcons track and field team traveled to Altoona for their first outdoor meet of the season on Monday evening.
The boys team tied with Cumberland for seventh place with 33 points and the girls team took eighth with 39 points. Prescott won both competitions, grabbing the top spot in the boys' meet with a score of 167 points and first in the girls’ meet with 122.50 points. The Altoona boys placed second with 120.5 points and the Fall Creek girls took the runner-up spot with 105 points.
Strong winds certainly played a factor for all, especially on the track where athletes needed to plow through wind gusts upwards of 30 miles per hour down the final stretch of most events.
Celia Schindler had the top finish for the Falcons on Monday, leading the girls squad by grabbing first place in the triple jump. She had nearly a foot of clearance over her next closest competitor, Rylee Winsand of Fall Creek, her longest leap measuring a distance of 31 feet, two inches.
Margo Pogodzinski grabbed two more top finishes for Abbotsford in the field events. The Falcons’ senior was the runnerup in the discus, second only to Colby’s Daelyn Rieck, her furthest throw traveling 109 feet, 11 inches. Earlier in the day, she took fourth place in the shot put, putting together a 31 foot, one-quarter inch throw performance.
On the track, Chloe Cihlar had a solid day in the short distance events. She came up with a trio of top-10 finishes, starting her day out with a second place finish in the 100-meter dash with a time of 14.27 seconds, defeating Prescott’s Charlette Kellogg by seven hundredths of a second to claim the runner-up spot. She followed that up with a fifth place in the 300-meter hurdles, posting a time of 57.67 seconds. In her final event of the day, Cihlar grabbed sixth place in the 200-meter dash, completing the race in 30.58 seconds.
Hazel Flink also had a scoring performance for the girls’ squad, taking eighth place in the 100-meter dash by finishing in 14.78 seconds. Monse Ochoa had the highest placement for the girls in the distance events, taking 13th in the 1600-meter run with a time of 6:56.13.
The 4x100-meter relay team of Irvin Davila, Chase Boiler, Carter Cihlar and Christian Fuentes had the highest finish in the boys’ competition, grabbing third in their event. They finished with a time of 47.23 seconds, trailing only the relays from Altoona and Prescott. The 4x200-meter relay team of Cihlar, Boiler, Jovanny Cruz and Miguel Bautista-Carreon took fifth, coming in just eight-hundredths of a second behind McDonell Central’s relay with a time of 1:40.08.
Marcus VanLuven and Fuentes led the team in the field events on Monday. VanLuven registered a pair of fourth place finishes in the throwing events, starting his day in the discus with a throw of 112 feet, 10 inches before following that up with a 38 foot, 11 inch throw in the shot put. Fuentes, meanwhile, grabbed a fourth place finish in the long jump, his best leap measuring 19 feet, 9.25 inches.
Boiler and Carlos Beltran also scored for the Falcons in the field events, the former taking seventh in the high jump by clearing
See ALTOONA MEET/ Page 22
RUNNING THROUGH THE WIND - Chloe Cihlar battles both the elements and her opponents as she cruises to a second place finish in the 100-meter dash. staffphoto/nathaniel underwood
POINT OF RELEASE - Margo Pogodzinski unleashes a throw In front of a crowd of spectators during the shot put competition in Altoona. She would go
STAFF PHOTO/NATHANIEL UNDERWOOD
FULL EXTENSION - Carter Cihlar stretches out during the triple jump competition.
STAFF PHOTO/NATHANIEL UNDERWOOD Altoona meet
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a height of five feet, four inches and the latter picking up eighth in the triple jump, his furthest attempt measuring 36 feet, 8.75 inches. Davila was one spot short of picking up points for Abbotsford in the discus, taking ninth place with a throw of 101 feet, six inches.
Bautista-Carreon had top individual placement for the boys’ squad on the track. Edging out Prescott’s William Haeg, the Falcons senior took sixth place in the 800meter run after posting a time of 2:23.69 in the event.
Preston Belanger also had a scoring performance for the Falcons in the long distance events. He grabbed seventh place in the 1600-meter run, holding off Altoona’s Logan Henrichs with a time of 5:40.01.
Fuentes had the best result in the individual sprints, taking 11th place in the 100-meter dash with a time of 12.51 seconds.
The Falcons will continue their season with a trip to Gilman on Thursday, April 17. The meet is set to begin at 4:15 p.m.
