The Pendleton Heights boys put on a similar performance to the New Palestine girls at the Hoosier Heritage Conference Championships.
On Tuesday at the girls’ meet, New Palestine won seven events and beat second place Pendleton Heights 143.5 to 95. On Thursday, the Pendleton Heights boys won eight events and beat second place Greenfield-Central 171.5 to 96.
Last year, the Arabians swept nearly every distance event but couldn’t win the team race as their sprint squad couldn’t match the distance runners. Thursday, they took the top two places in the 200-meter dash, the 800-meter run, and the 1,600-meter run, with a handful of third place finishes.
Luke Upton set a meet record in the 800 meter run with a mark of one minute, 55.40 seconds, and Eli Pancol set a meet record, and nearly a school record, in the high jump with a leap of 6 feet, 8 inches.
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Click here to purchase photos from this galleryGreenfield-Central’s main source of points came from their field events. Freshman Turk Faitele won the shot put with a toss of 48 feet, 5 inches with his teammate, Tate Helm, in second place just six inches behind him. Adam Lee and Cody Hargett also took the top two places in the pole vault for the Cougars, and Braden Brown won the long jump.
“We had some ups and downs, like any track meet,” Cougars coach Scott Burton said. “We lost some points on the track with false starts and some guys just didn’t have enough time to recover with how quickly this meet went by, but overall I’m very pleased.”
New Palestine’s distance squad helped the team finish third, 20.5 points behind Greenfield-Central. They had one conference champion in Kyler Harrison, who won the 3,200-meter run over Mt. Vernon’s Drew Bluthemann. The team’s next highest finisher was Drew Austin, who placed third in the 1,600-meter run and the 800-meter run, behind Pendleton’s Upton and Milan Jones in both events. Spencer Worth also finished third in the pole vault.
Mt. Vernon finished just 1.5 points behind New Palestine for fourth place, despite winning the discus throw and 400-meter dash. Coach Bruce Kendall was sure to give praise to his 400-meter champion, Alex Carver.
“Anything Carver touched was gold today,” Kendall said. “Not only did he win the 400, he helped the 4×800 drop 14 seconds off of their season best and anchored the 4×400 to second place.”
Mt. Vernon wasn’t without their struggles, though, as one of their pole vaulters broke his pole before the competition started, and he was unable to compete. The Marauders also sidelined one of the Hoosier Heritage Conference’s best sprinters, Jailin Brown, as a “precaution.”
The conference meet was the final meet of the regular season for each team, as sectional action begins next Thursday. Greenfield-Central and New Palestine compete at Warren Central, while Mt. Vernon will return to its home track one more time to host a sectional including Lawrence North and Anderson.
“The sectional is very fast,” Kendall said. “but we don’t worry about who we advance, we just try to win everything one week at a time.”
Kendall would like to win at least three events at the sectional to one-up their two wins at the conference meet, but said he and the team focus on the present rather than the future.
“Right now, we are healthy and the upperclassmen are doing great,” he said.
For Greenfield-Central, like most teams, the goal is to advance as many runners as possible to the regional meet.
“The sectional roster is due tomorrow, so now we just go and fill holes and do as well as we can as a team,” Burton said. “We’re just looking to get as many guys as possible through to the next level.”
