Spirit Lake, Ia (Northwest Iowa Now) – We continue our features on KICD 9-County Area teams of the year with a look at Girls Track and Field.
There were some strong teams in the KICD 9-County Area with some good representation at the State Meet. Alta-Aurelia took 13th in Class 1A. Estherville Lincoln Central broke into the top 15 of 2A. Emmetsburg’s Rachel Schaney scored 30 points on her own at the State meet to place the E-Hawks 6th in 2A. But the answer to the question, “Who had the best Girls Track and Field team in the KICD Area” would be a quick and easy one.
Spirit Lake had a stacked lineup from the beginning of the year and showed as much by taking 4th in the IATC Indoor Championships in Mid-March.
After a lot of success in the Indoor portion of the schedule, Spirit Lake opened up the outdoor with a 2nd place finish at the Dutch Quad in Orange City. They would come back to Orange City for the highly competitive Dutch Relays on April 8th. There they would take 3rd behind a pair of strong 3A Programs in MOC-Floyd Valley and Sioux Center.
From there, Spirit Lake would finish 1st on their own track twice, won the Lakes Conference Championship, and then finished 2nd at the 2A State Qualifying Meet in Garner. The only team in front of them was Forest City, who got them by 9 points. The next closest team at that site was Sioux Central, who was 34 points back from Spirit Lake.
At the State Meet in Des Moines, Spirit Lake picked up their first team point on Thursday in the 4x800m Relay where a team of Mueting, Beck, Petersen, and Scott placed 8th.
It was Lauren Travis in the Shot Put taking 2nd with a mark of 41’10.5”, finishing behind Lakes Conference Rival Hillary Ruschy. That gave them 11 total points scored on Day 1.
On Friday, the 4x200m Relay team made up of DeWild, Keenan, Bolluyt, and Leupold took 2nd with a time of 1:42.37.
Saturday is when Spirit Lake really started to pile up the points. The 800m Sprint Medley Relay took 3rd with a team of Keenan, DeWild, Leupold, and Bolluyt clocking 1:50.36.
Leah Bolluyt ripped off a time of 14.66 seconds in the 100m Hurdles Finals to win the State Championship, .13 seconds in front of 2nd place Miranda Neighbor of Alburnett.
Anthea Leupold took 4th in the 200m Dash, running a time of 25.52 seconds.
A team of DeWild, Keenan, Bolluyt, and Leupold were 2nd in the 4x100m Relay, just .25 seconds behind State Champ Pella Christian.
The success in those events landed Spirit Lake 4th with 46 team points. Pella Christian was the State Champion, Van Meter Runner-Up, and Tipton took 3rd.
This has been another Team of the Year Feature from Northwest Iowa Now.
