Recap: Students Earn Top Marks and Times at State Track
Roosevelt’s Jalynn Roberts-Lewis earned four titles at the 2014 Iowa High School Track & Field Meet.
The 2014 Iowa High School Track & Field was held May 22-24 at Drake Stadium in Des Moines. Student-athletes from East, Hoover, Lincoln and Roosevelt qualified to compete in 31 events in search of state titles. DMPS athletes captured several top spots at the meet, led by Roosevelt seniors Jalynn Roberts-Lewis (who won four state titles) and Sydne Davis (two state titles).
Below are some notes and observations from this year’s meet, including a recap of DMPS students who earned top-8 finished in their events:
- After earning three titles at this year’s Drake Relays, Jalynn Roberts-Lewis brought home four gold medals at this year’s state meet. On Friday morning she repeated as the long jump champion, with a monster leap of 19′ 2″. Things got busier for her on Saturday, first winning the 100 meters (in a time that tied the meet record), then capturing the 200 meters (in a time that set a new meet record), and then helping her teammates win the 4×100 relay title. Roberts-Lewis proves the notion that track and field athletes must wear many hats, er, shoes. She had to be allowed to move ahead in the long jump rotation for her final leap on Friday so she could toss off her jumpers and slap on her sprinter spikes just in time to help her Rider teammates win a qualifying heat in the 4×100 relay. Her haste wasn’t wasteful, though, as she won the event by more than a foot over her nearest competitor.
- Kind of implicit in the notion of running in circles is that you never really get anywhere. But for prep long distance runners maybe it’s more instructive to think in terms of climbing a ladder than going around and around. Thursday morning on the famed blue oval at Drake Stadium Roosevelt junior Megan Schott kept climbing. Last year she placed 7th in the girls 3,000 meter run at the state meet; Thursday she placed 4th. The 3,000 meter run is an event that is a 7 1/2 lap, 10-minute gut buster. Or, in Megan’s case this year, 9:59.48 to be precise, a time that would have won by 20 seconds in 2012 when she was a freshman and didn’t qualify for state. She may not have broken the tape at the finish line but at least she had the personal satisfaction of breaking the ten-minute barrier before pausing long enough to catch her breath and disappearing in stocking feet into the mist and the crowd like a race car merging into rush hour traffic.
- Speaking of guts busting, only at the state track festival will you see young lady athletes dolling up with ribbons and lipstick right next to young men fresh from running the 3,200 throwing up into a waste barrel. Not to mention the young fella sporting a Mohawk haircut and a pink tutu to go with the t-shirt he wore in support of the hometown girls.
- When the Lincoln boys’ 4×400 relay unit failed to qualify for the finals during preliminary heats on Friday afternoon there was at least the consolation for Elijah Young, the lone senior member of the quartet, that he would be free for his high school commencement ceremony next door at the Knapp Center. The last event of the meet was scheduled for 4:05 pm Saturday afternoon. Lincoln’s graduation overlapped. Elijah’s fast but he can’t be in two places at once and buried that deep in the alphabet, no way he could’ve grabbed his diploma in time to throw off his cap and gown and grab a relay baton.
- Roosevelt senior Sydne Davis won the boys’ 400 meter hurdles a year ago but he was the runner-up in that grueling event at the Drake Relays this spring so that race shaped up as an especially competitive one with fellow DMPS speedster, Lincoln senior Elijah Young, as one of the prime contenders. But Davis ran his personal best time in the finals by a couple of seconds, an astonishing drop for the one-lap sprint and jump. How good was his performance? Afterwards some of his rivals were paying him the supreme compliment of utter disbelief at his winning time.
“Are you serious?” one of them asked, slapping hands.
“What were you doing out there?” said another, shaking his head.
“Dude, that was sick,” commented another also-ran. “I beat my PR (personal record) by a second and wasn’t even close.”
- Thursday morning the meet opened in a chilly mist. The rest of the weekend you could smell sunscreen on the gentle breezes. And in utter contrast to the round and round of the distance events is the back and forth of the shuttle hurdle relays.
- Lincoln senior Kaleb Kesselring proved to be a very consistent performer in his sprint events. On Thursday, he ran the second-fastest qualifying times in both the 100 and 200 meters. On Saturday, he was the State runner-up in both events.
- Standing on the infield looking up into a bank of grandstand packed with cheering fans as teenagers reaching their primes dash to and fro the realization strikes that this is it in a nutshell: youngsters doing their best, trying to go faster, longer and higher with lots of support from people who care.
- What do you do for an encore after a day spent breaking tapes and records in the state track meet? If you’re the ballistic duo of Roberts-Lewis and Davis you change outfits, scoot next door to the Knapp Center and graduate from high school. Did anyone ever say there’d be days like that?
Finally, DMPS high schools fared well in the team competition, too. On the girls’ side of the meet, the Roosevelt Roughriders finished third. And among the 37 boys’ track and field teams, both Roosevelt (7th) and Lincoln (9th) came away with Top 10 finishes. Below is a summary of all the DMPS student-athletes who finished in the top eight at state and scored points for their schools in the team standings:
ROOSEVELT GIRLS
Jalynn Roberts-Lewis won the long jump, 100 meters and 200 meters, and was a member of the winning 4×100 meter relay unit that included McKenna Schnack, Teanna Lewis and Briyanna Carter. Carter also finished second in the 100 meters. Megan Schott was fourth in the 3,000 meters and fifth in the 1,500. The distance medley relay team of Teanna Lewis, Jaelyn Johnson, Ashley Brown and Joy Ihedilonye finished seventh and the 4×800 relay team of Schott, Ihedilonye, Sarah Voss and McKenzie Carney finished fourth. Ihedilonye also ran to a sixth place finish in the 800 meters. Julia Odir placed eighth in the long jump.
EAST GIRLS
Dimetrea Hamilton was third and Ajae Anderson was eighth in the 100 meter hurdles. Those two teamed with Abbie Youngwirth and Asia Bell to place sixth in the 4×100 shuttle hurdle relay. )NOTE: All underclassmen, they’re just getting warmed up.)
ROOSEVELT BOYS
Sydne Davis won the 400 meter hurdles, the 110 meter hurdles, ran on the third place 4×110 shuttle hurdle relay quartet with Josh Sparks, Cameron Williams and Jason King, and also anchored the runner-up 4×400 unit that included Sparks, Williams and Prince Krah.
LINCOLN BOYS
Kaleb Kesselring was second in both the 100 meter and 200 meter dashes. Elijah Young finished third in both the 400 meter and 110 meter hurdles and anchored the Railsplitters’ 8th place 4×110 shuttle hurdle relay that also included Isaac Scott, Logan Garrels and Finn Hoogensen.
EAST BOYS
Austin Lee was fourth in the 100 meter and 200 meter wheelchair events and fifth in the 400 meters.
