FORTVILLE — Mt. Vernon may have had just two individual champions at Tuesday’s Hoosier Heritage Conference Girls Track and Field Championships, but everyone got a chance to celebrate.
By a mere one point, the Marauders, who scored two competitors in eight of 16 events and placed first or second in the three relay races, edged 2019 champion New Palestine 113-112 to earn the program’s first conference title since 1999.
“We knew it was going to be tight coming in,” Mt. Vernon head coach Kean Coy said. “The first six teams, on paper, were about a 20-point spread. We knew it was going to be a battle. We knew every point was going to count throughout the night.”
Mt. Vernon had champions in the 400-meter relay (52.67 seconds), with Mya Eppert, Riley Nielsen, Anaiah Garrett, all sophomores, and Morgan Kille, a junior, and pole vault, with Nielsen, who cleared 9-feet, 6-inches.
The rest of the night was reliant on the team’s depth. The Marauders were second in both the 3,200-meter relay and 1,600-meter relay, as well as the 100-meter dash, with Eppert.
Mt. Vernon scored both of its entrants in the 100, 200 and 400 meter dashes, 800 and 1,600 runs, the 100-meter and 300-meter hurdle races and the pole vault.
“The key was putting two scorers in a lot of those events. That was massive,” Coy said. “That doesn’t sound like much when you don’t get the 10 points (for first place), but if you get six here and seven there, that helps out tremendously.”
It came down to the night’s final event, the 1,600-meter relay. New Palestine and Mt. Vernon were the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds. The Marauders, to hang on to first place and win their first title in 22 years, had to make sure, if the Dragons were going to win the race, they had to place second.
That’s how it played out.
New Palestine with Courtney Study, Anne Bauer, Brenna Shaw and Lexi Baynes won in 4:19.75. The Marauders with Emma Gasiorek, Raelyn Stanfield, Alexandra Overshiner and Morgan Tharp were second in 4:23.46.
Coy put Stanfield, the team’s lone senior, in the event just before the start. She ran, as the team’s second runner, a personal best 65-second lap. It was her first time running in the relay event this season.
“I was so nervous,” Stanfield said, who found out during the 3,200-meter run that she was running the relay. “I’d never run anything like that before. My teammates were all so encouraging and in the end (the move) paid off.”
New Palestine had five champions.
Along with winning the 1,600 relay, they opened the evening with a win in the 3,200-meter relay. Clocking in at 10:27.70, Study, Emily Adam, Megan Collins and Kendall Mann picked up the blue ribbon.
Sophomore Sydney Miller won the discus with a distance of 121-feet, 3 inches. Baynes won the 400 in 1:02.51 and Mann took the top spot in the 3,200 with a time of 11:39.03.
“They competed very well and we had some great performances out of a lot of young ladies,” New Palestine head coach Chuck Myers said of his team. “Coming in, we were probably slated to lose by about 20 and we got it close. Mt. Vernon performed well and they are a great team and deserved it.”
It was also a strong night for Greenfield-Central’s Kayana Maroska. The junior won both hurdle races. She took top honors in the 100 event with a time of 15.96 seconds, edging Yorktown’s Emilee Hill, who finished in 16.20 seconds.
In the 300 hurdles, Maroska won in 47.82 seconds, just .14 seconds ahead of New Castle’s Ella Garvin.
Team-wise, Yorktown placed third with 89.5 points. New Castle was next with 82, followed by Greenfield-Central 76, Delta 69.5, Pendleton Heights 47 and Shelbyville 35.
“It’s huge (to win conference). It gives us another boost heading into the sectional next week,” Coy said.
Last week, Mt. Vernon won the Hancock County championship. Again the Marauders and Dragons were 1-2. The meet was close but nothing like Tuesday’s. At county, Mt. Vernon scored 94 points to New Pal’s 76.5.
