To describe Friday’s track and field regional championship in Corunna in one word: success. Friday’s meet was extraordinary in many ways…PRs, overachieving performances, rain, lightning, 2 weather delays, lots of state qualifiers, and a 3rd place overall team finish. Owosso girls got off to a quick start, and even the lightning delays couldn't slow us down. On the day we had 5 state qualifiers in 9 events. Without even trying to maximize our points for the day, we still managed to finish less than a point out of 2nd place overall. Even though the meet lasted until after midnight, more than 9 hours after the start of field events, our girls still gave everything they had race after race. I can’t say enough about how impressed and awed I am by this group. I just feel blessed to be a part of their success. 

Team scores (out of 16 schools)

1. Frankenmuth 125.25

2. St. Johns 83

3. Owosso 82.25

4. Linden 82.25

5. Flint Powers Catholic 70

Full scoring can be found here: https://www.athletic.net/TrackAndField/meet/533610/teamscores

The way state qualifying works in track is one of two ways. An athlete can either finish in the top 2 in each event at regionals and automatically qualify, or they can earn an additional qualifying standard that is predetermined based on results over the course of the previous several years in the state. 

We used both methods to qualify athletes on Friday. Starting with our best performances, we were able to come away with 3 regional champions in 4 events! Kyle Bermudez and Gabi Hufnagel started the day PRs in the 100m hurdle prelims where Kyle finished 1st in 16.3 and Gabi second in 16.48. Both performances were stellar, but when they came back for the finals, Gabi really put on a show by cutting off an additional .6 seconds on her way to a regional championship! Gabi’s 15.88 makes her only the 2nd girl in Owosso history to break 16 seconds. What makes this even better is Kyle was still able to finish 2nd, cutting a couple more hundredths off her time and allowing the pair to both punch their tickets to the state finals in 2 weeks.

After 2 separate lightning delays totaling more than 2 hours, Gabi kept her focus and was still able to come out and dominate the 300m hurdle field, running 47.44 and winning by nearly 2 full seconds. 

Libby Summerland continued to show her consistency in pole vault, vaulting 11’ 1” and winning by 10”. It is really saying something that Libby was able to win by the margin she did against a pretty stacked field where 6 girls were able to hit the AQ (additional qualifying) mark of 9’3” and earn the right to compete in the state finals. In fact, one of those girls was teammate Kyle Bermudez who hit 9’3” for the first time in her career, finishing 5th and earning the right to compete in her 2nd event at the state finals. 

Our final regional champion this year was none other than Peyton Spicer. Peyton had a great day in high jump where she is looking better and better and the season is progressing. Peyton’s jump of 5’3” was the best among the 3 other girls who managed to jump 5’1” and qualify for the state championship. Her jump of 5’3” puts Peyton just 1” away from her school record jump of 5’4”. Peyton then went on to throw 110’ 11” in discus on her way to a 3rd place finish. However, as 108’ is the additional qualifying mark, she was able to do enough to qualify in her second event. This will be the 2nd time Peyton has competed at state in both of these events.

We had 2 more state qualifying performances on the evening. After her success in pole vault, Libby Summerland took to the track in the 400, and despite being a bit under the weather, she was still able to run 1:00.11 and finish in 2nd place. This state finals will mark the 4 year Libby has competed in pole vault and 3rd time she has ran the 400m. 

Our final state qualifying performance on Friday came from Skotti Ball-Duley. Skotti had to wait until after 11:00 PM to run in her first event. She did a great job keeping her composure and motivation throughout the delays and came out swinging in the 800m. Her race was one of the most stacked races I have ever seen in a regional before. The top 8 girls were more than 2 full seconds under the additional qualifying mark of 2:25, sending all of them to state. Skotti’s PR time of 2:22.02 put her in 6th place. I have the sneaking suspicion that we still haven’t seen the best Skotti has to offer either.

Unfortunately, we did have 2 events that we came up just a little short of qualifying. Desiree Mofield didn’t have her best day, but still was able to leave with a 5th place shot put medal as well as an 8th place discus medal. Although Desiree won’t be competing at the state meet this year, she will be competing at the Greater Lansing Honor Roll meet. Also, I have no doubt that Desiree will use this experience to evolve into what I know she can be. I wouldn’t be surprised if Des comes out next year gunning for a school record.

Our final event that we nearly qualified for, which just happened to literally be the final event of the night, was the 4x400m relay. Unfortunately, we never had the chance to put the fastest four 400m runners on the track together during the season. That meant that we didn’t have a fast time to enter for this meet, resulting in us having to run from the “slow” heat. Knowing that this race was poised to be stacked as well, we figured we would have to run the AQ time of 4:16 with no competition to make it in. Our girls gave everything they had left, running 4:16.23, less than a quarter of a second from the standard and finishing in 6th place.

Finally, we had 2 additional PR’s on Friday. Kyle Bermudez capped off her very successful day with a 7” PR in long jump, finishing in 4th with a jump of 15’ 9”. Freshman Lexi Blaha also had a nice 5” PR in long jump with a jump of 12’7”.

Full results can be found here: https://www.athletic.net/TrackAndField/meet/533610/results/all