Huskies track heads to state
Owatonna’s Eli Spurgeon, center, and Alfons Cantu, right, place first and third in the discus throw finals last week at the Section 1AAA Meet. Spurgeon was dominant in the field winning both the discus and shot put events. Staff photo by Johnnie Phillips
The Owatonna boys and girls track teams both had productive days at the Section 1AAA Meet at Lakeville South High School last weekend and will both have individual members from their teams competing at the Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL) State Meet on Thursday.
Owatonna’s boys team took home first place at the meet with 198.5 team points to qualify all competing members from the team for the MSHSL State Meet while the girls squad took home fifth place with 86.5 team points.
“I’ve always known that this was going to be the year that we were going to be really good,” said Ryan Gregory, senior track star. “We have a lot of really good athletes on this team and every just contributes perfectly. We surprise each other every week with how well we do and how much we improve.”
The Huskies boys squad was sparked to victory behind six wins with three coming from the track and three coming from the field.
Carter Johnson took home first in the 110-meter hurdles, Ryan Gregory won the 300-meter hurdles race and the Owatonna boys 4x800 relay team capped the relays with a winning time of 8:07.42 to cap the wins on the track.
Gregory’s time in the 300-meter hurdles was not only a personal record, but also broke Tim Warner’s record time of 38.41 set back in 1981 and duplicated by Jacob Johnson in 2016.
In the field, Eli Spurgeon won both the shot put and discus throw while Justin Gleason won the long jump to account for three wins.
Spurgeon was dominant in the field for the Huskies and set a personal-record distance of 53 feet and one-quarter inch in the shot put and won the discus throw by nearly five feet with a distance of 151 feet.
The Owatonna girls track team recorded zero wins, but did advance a relay team to the MSHSL State Meet with the 4x100 relay team taking home second place with a time of 49.94 seconds.
Competing on Thursday at the MSHSL State Meet will be the same roster of Huskies boys athletes from the Section 1AAA Meet after all athletes qualified by winning the team section of the meet, while the girls squad will feature just Janessa Moore, Laken Meier, Lauren Waypa and Ava Wolfe in the 4x100 relay.