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Girls earn 3rd, 6th at state tournament
by Norv and Mary Coblentz · Sports · May 25, 2017
The West Branch girls track and field team qualified five events for the Iowa State Meet at Drake Stadium in Des Moines.
The meet was held May 18-20, and the Bears came away with a third-place finish in the 400m hurdles and a sixth-place finish in the 4x400.
May 18, Tatum Koenig started the Bears’ competition by competing in the long jump. She finished in 17th place with a jump of 15-05.75.
The next event of the meet for the Bears was the shuttle hurdle relay race. In the preliminary race, the girls had a setback and did not make the finals.
“The girls were running great,” West Branch Co-head Coach Carol Lumpa said. “Tatum Koenig got us the lead on the lead-off leg. Kaiya Luneckas and Jaylen Votroubek built the lead to a full hurdle length. Paige Miller was running awesome until she hit and fell over the eighth hurdle. She quickly recovered to finish the race, but it was not enough to get the girls to the finals. It was devastating to all of us, but we needed to recover fast because we still had three events to compete in the next day. The shuttle hurdle relay ended up 15th in the state, but the time we ran at districts would have been fourth in the state finals. So in our hearts we know they are a top-four relay. These girls were resilient.”
The Bears placed 11th in the 4x200 May 19. The 4x200 team of Koenig, Votroubek, Lunekas, and Miller finished with a time of 1:49.63 for 11th place.
Miller ran a personal-best time of 1:05.79 for a third-place finish in the 400m hurdles.
The final event for the Bears on Friday (May 19) was the 4x400m preliminary race. “(This was) our last chance to run on Saturday,” Lumpa said. The team, Koenig, Votroubek, Luneckas, and Miller “ran a season-best time of 4:07.39 to qualify (for the finals) in the sixth spot.
“I had challenged my team in the early part of the competitive season,” Lumpa said, “that if they wanted to get better they needed to work out like Paige Miller. She just always works so hard and pushes herself. Tatum Koenig, Jaylen Votroubek and Kaiya Luneckas responded to that, and by the end of the season all four girls were running high 16 and low 17 splits in the hurdles. They all ran 26 splits in the 4x200 and Saturday (May 20) they finished sixth place in the 4x400 with a season-best time of 4:06.33, and they all ran 61 splits.
“We could not be more proud of them. One of the toughest things to do in sports is to come back from adversity. These girls will go far and be successful.”
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