The Milan News-Leader
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
Milan boys claim 2nd straight Huron crown
By Jerry Hinnen, Staff Writer
PUBLISHED: May 31, 2007
The Milan boys' track team has polished off its second consecutive perfect season with its second straight conference championship.
Advertisement
The Milan Big Reds ran away with the Huron League meet at Monroe-Jefferson May 22, winning a pair of postponed dual meets in the process to finish with a 7-0 record and claim the outright Huron title for the second consecutive year.
"This was an entire team effort," said head coach Rich Pellegrini. "We had guys stepping up to the plate. I guess we were a little shocked at the final margin. We won by almost 40 points ... The coaches are very proud of this team and their accomplishments."
The Big Reds were led by junior sprinter Ron Spears, who rebounded from narrowly missing out on state qualification in the 100-meter dash at Regionals by winning four first-place medals. Spears took first in the long jump with a leap of 21'4"; in the 100 dash with a time of 10.8; in the 200 dash in a personal-best 22.6; and in the 400 relay, joining Anthony Marshall, Cedric Douglas, and Kyle Love to finish first in 44.3, a new Huron League record.
"He's a junior, but this is really his first year of competitive track," Pellegrini said of Spears. "Two weeks in a row he's been down to his last jump, but he's persevered."
Spears had plenty of help. Milan won two other events, with Douglas, Marshall, Love, and Leandro Gabrielzyk taking the 800 relay in 1:32.2 and Eric Betts taking first place in the high jump by clearing 6'2".
In the field events, Milan also got points from Erik Myyra and Gabrielzyk in the long jump, Myyra taking third with a personal-best 18'10 and Gabrielzyk fifth with 18'5". In the discus, David Box took third with a season-best throw of 134'2", followed by Hamid Thompson in fourth with a career-best throw of 128'9". Corey Gunderson finished ninth with a personal-best 120'4". In the shot put, Jake Hill took fourth with a personal-best throw of 44'8" and Scott Kenyon finished sixth with a throw of 43'5.25". Josh Martin jumped 5'3" to take eighth in the high jump.
In the hurdles, Love and Betts rebounded from false starts in the 110 hurdles to finish third in 41.8 and seventh in 43.8, respectively.
Milan continued their year-long strong performances in the sprints, with Marshall finishing second in the 100 dash in 10.9; Gabrielzyk (51.7, a personal-best) second and Sam Rowe (53.7, a personal-best) fifth in the 400 dash; and Gabrielzyk, Rowe, Myyra, and Brian Kirkpatrick second in the 1600 relay in 3:36.1.
Pellegrini said the 800 meters "took us over the top" after Myyra, Kirkpatrick, and Antohny Mann went 3-4-5 in times of 2:07.8, 2:10.6, and 2:12, respectively. In the 3200 relay, Rowe, Myyra, Mann, and Kirkpatrick took third in 8:37.7. Kyle Anderson took fifth in the 3200 and seventh in the 1600 in personal-best times of 10:25 and 4:48, respectively. Jessie Nie took 10th in the 1600 in a personal-best 4:57.
The Milan girls wrapped up their season with a fourth-place finish at the league meet.
"We ran about as well as we could have," said girls' head coach Steve Porter. "We were in the upper division, just about where we thought we could be."
As usual the Milan girls were led by their distance crew, with senior Emily Wilson winning the 1600 in 5:26.6, finishing runner-up in the 800 in 2:30.5 and adding a sixth-place finish in the 3200. Freshman Jordan Tomecek ran 11:43.1 to win the 3200 and took fifth in the 1600 in 5:36.1. Wilson, Tomecek, Kara Porter, and Tiffany Stoddard combined to finish fourth in the 3200 relay.
But the Big Reds scored in a number of non-distance events as well. Taylor McGovern took third in the high jump with a jump of 4'10". Remina Reed took third in the 100 dash with a time of 13.1 and along with Mareisha Lala, Loren Weber, and Ashley Agar helped the 1600 relay to a third-place finish.
Agar continued to shine as Milan's top hurdler by finishing sixth in the 100 hurdles and fifth in the 300.
Porter said the Milan girls' team had taken strides in 2007, though there was still work to do.
"The girls were focused and ran really hard at the end of the season, which was something we didn't do last season. We're headed in the right direction," he said, "but we're not as balanced as we'd like. We need more speed to go with our distance runners."
The teams' attention now turns to the state meet, where Porter said Wilson and Tomecek will look to finish as high as fifth and possibly break the school record of 11:28. For the boys, the Big Red state team (of Marshall, Spears, Gabrielzyk, Love, and Douglas) will be hoping to put forth their best effort forst and foremost, and worry about points second.
"We want to run our best times, and maybe break some school records," Pellegrini said.
Not all stories are guaranteed to appear
online. The Web edition contains a reasonable
sampling of the print edition stories.
For the most complete news coverage, we invite you to
subscribe
to the print edition of the paper.
Expanded
Web
Coverage
Staff Blog, "Inside The Newsroom"
TOP JOBS
