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GLENWOOD – Creston boys track and field keeps lowering their times and extending their distances this season, showing more improvements into the third week of the track and field season.
Despite improvements, the Panther boys scored 26 points seventh-place. Host Glenwood was the meet winner with 172 points while Clarinda was in second with 132 points.
The boys’ half of the Glenwood Relays went on medaling the top-5 in individual events, and awarding medals to the top-3 finishing relay teams. The Panthers fell just outside of earning a medal for relay teams, but did earn two medals in the field.
Chris Wilson threw the discus a 117 feet, five inches for a season best. He finished third with that distance. Keagan Smith’s toss in the shot put placed him fourth, racking up a distance of 40 feet, six inches.
Two medals from the evening came out of the field, something Schlapia said was a great thing to see to boost the confidence of the throwers.
“Coach (Steve) Birchard, he was really coming back from the throws with that. So were the boys,” said Schlapia. “... That was nice to see, and they were pumped up.”
Schlapia continued to rave about the throwers, who put on a season-best day with warm and slightly windy weather playing into their benefit.
“You look at all our throwers, ... we had seasons best in a lot of our shots,” said Schlapia. “Not only with Keagan and Chris medaling, but a lot of them had seasons bests out of this. ... That was awesome. ... The throwers really shone through.”
Hunter Walters’ distance of 29-09 in the shot put is a season-best. His distance of 69-06 in the discus also is a season-best. Smith and Wilson’s distances were also a season-best, in both events.
Max Chapman also threw in the discus, going a distance of 82 feet, six inches. He also threw in the shot, going a distance of 33-05.
More season-best numbers came on the track, with the 4x800 relay team posting a season-low time of 9:21.62.
The group of Austin Evans, Dylan Calvin, Ty Morrison and Brandon Briley took fourth in the field, missing a medal by 0.16 of a second.
“That 4x800, that’s a season best. All those guys ran really well,” said Schlapia. “Austin, that was the first time for him to get under 2:20 (in split of the relay). Same thing with Ty. ... basically they all had season bests. That was nice to see from them to improve by eight seconds from the Winterset meet, when before they improved by 12 seconds. Within a week they went from 9:41 to 9:21.”
Cael Kralik and Tony Davidson ran season-best times in the 100 meter dash, clocking in at 12.56 and 12.73 respectively, in a “tough and competitive” field.
In the 4x200, the time of 1:43.34 also was a new season-best. Christ Wells, Dylan Calvin, Ethan Freeman and Kralik help contribute to the fourth-place relay team that missed a medal by four seconds.
The Panthers also took fourth in the 4x400 (Briley, Davidson, Calvin and Kralik), running a time of 3:52.77, to finish just under four seconds behind third-place Red Oak. The time was an eight second improvement from their last best time.
The Panthers also had a sixth-place finish in the open 800 from Briley, who clocked a time of 2:13.91(season-best). Jayden Pettegrew was eighth in the 400 meter hurdles, running a 66.09 (season-best). Chris Chen was ninth in the open 400, running a 1:00.96 (season-best).
Even with good times and season best times going around, Schlapia said there’s still stuff to work on to keep getting better to the point where the Panthers can start worrying about the team scores in meets.
“This still gives us some things to look at. Some things to work on. We had some improvements and there’s still some things we need to work on,” said Schlapia.