The Southeast Valley boys’ track & field team, coming off their strong conference meet performance competed at the Jim Yunek Relays in Lake City on Thursday, May 5th, 2023. With just one day’s rest, the Jaguars changed up their line-up a little bit to fine tune and prepare for their upcoming State Qualifying meet on Thursday, May 11th as well as get some of the younger JV runners one last opportunity to compete.

Even with the changes to the line-up, the Jaguars were able to take 3rd place honors in the meet scoring 107 points. IKM-Manning won the meet with 135.33 points and host South Central Calhoun finished 2nd with 114 points.

Justin Loseke was the lone individual winner on Thursday night sweeping both the shot put and discus with throws of 47’ 2.5” and 152’ 6” respectively. The 4 x 100m relay team of Dreyvon Steadman, Eli Johnson, Carl Berglund, and Jace Hanson also took gold with a season best time of 45.20. The same quartet also took second place in the 4 x 200m relay in a season best of 1:34.39.  

Nate Scott and Ethan Ackerson continued the Jaguars’ dominance in the throws this year both taking runner up honors to Justin. Nate threw a 125’ 6” in the discus and Ethan threw 46’ 6” in the shot put. Cooper Nuss also earned the silver medal in the 1600m run, running a time of 4:53.46. He was also part of the 1600m distance medley relay that finished 2nd place in a time of 4:03.25. Joining Cooper was Brady Hanson, Andrew Miller and Oscar Hanson. Oscar took 3rd place behind Cooper in the 1600m run with a season best of 4:58.89.

The relays continued to be the strength of the team on Thursday as the 4 x 400m relay team of Preston Kennedy, Drew Dorsey, Kayden Showers and Chanlir Roberts took 3rd place (4:00.55) and the shuttle hurdle relay team with Colin Johnson, Ben Thompson, Drew Temple, and Jacob Snyder took 4th (1:17.55). Finally the sprint medley relay of Jace Nelson, Brady Hanson, Kayden Showers and Preston Kennedy took 4th overall.

Eli Johnson and Jace Hanson took 4th (18’ 9.5”) and 5th (18’ 7.5”) respectively in the long jump and Colin Johnson took 6th in the 800m run (2:20.98). Teammate Ethan Tucker was not far behind Colin in the 800 finishing 8th (2:23.35). Lincoln Akins ran a big PR in the 3200m to take 8th place in 12:20.88 and Logan Bintz also had a PR in the 3200m running 12:32.85.

Joe Kauffman and Grant Farnham ran season bests in the 400m dash running 1:04.98 and 1:06.98 respectively. Jacob Snyder shaved some time off his best 400m of the year running 1:08.67 while in the 110m high hurdles and 400m low hurdles, Ben Thompson also ran his best times of the year.

“We try to rest our top runners this meet after competing hard at conference, so we were taking a look at what relays we could drop some time and possibly get a chance to state last night. Our underclassmen and JV runners stepped up filling some of the open events and are finishing the year on a high note by running their best times. Hopefully this leaves a good taste in their mouth to push themselves in the off season to get better,” commented Coach Nuss.

The Jaguars will compete in their state qualifying meet on Thursday, May 11th at Ida Grove. Here the top two place winners in each event will qualify for the state track meet in Des Moines the following weekend along with the next best eight performances from across the state qualifying meets in the state on Thursday.