A plethora of local high school boys track and field athletes brought home hardware from the IHSA state finals in Charleston. In class 1A, Rockridge’s Peyton Locke brought home three medals. Locke won the state title in the 100 meter dash with a time of 10.86. He nearly brought home two first-place medals after placing second in the 200 meter dash. His time of 21.76 was just .16 behind Winnebago’s Supreme Muhammad’s first place time. Locke also ran a leg on Rockridge’s 4×200 meter relay team that placed 6th. As a team, the Rockets were 10th in the standings.
Mercer County’s Chase Olson was 7th in the 1A triple jump event. United High School’s 4×200 relay team of Andrew Olson, Abel Wilson, Landon Burns and Sam Perry placed 32nd in Thursday’s preliminaries and did not make Saturday’s finals.
West Central’s Kaiden Droste was a busy man in Charleston, qualifying in three events. His 200 meter dash time of 23.76 was 31st in Thursday’s prelims and his 400 meter time of 51.57 was 15th. Neither time was good enough for Droste to advance to Saturday’s finals. He also competed in the long jump, where he was 13th overall. Droste’s teammate, Tyler Neuman, cleared 1.8 meters in the high jump preliminaries. That was the 15th best height but not enough to move on to the finals.
Knoxville High School had two relay teams qualify for Charleston but neither placed high enough to move on to Saturday’s finals. The Blue Bullet 4×100 was 23rd and the 4×200 was 35th on Thursday in the preliminaries.
Class 2A and 3A preliminaries were held on Friday. Monmouth-Roseville’s Jerome Jackson was involved in four events in the prelims. His best race was the 100 meter dash, where he placed 11th. His time of 11.05 was merely .07 from advancing to Saturday’s finals. He also ran the 200 meter dash on Thursday, where he placed 17th. Jerome’s long jump of 6.22 meters was 13th best in the state. He also ran a leg on Monmouth-Roseville’s 4×200 meter relay team. The squad of Jackson, Charlie Pullen, Jekxel Rivera and Maddox Clark was 11th, just .4 from getting to Saturday’s finals. Two Monmouth-Roseville throwers brought home medals from Charleston. Ethan Davis placed 8th in the shot put and Trevor Snyder was 9th in the same event. Davis also placed 12th in the discus and Snyder was 22nd in the discus.
Macomb’s Jayden Jones’ first place in the long jump and 8th in the high jump gave the school a 23rd place finish in the team standings.
Galesburg High School had several athletes on the famous blue track at Eastern Illinois University on Friday and Saturday. The meet was highlighted for Galesburg by Plamedi Nseka’s 4th place in the 400 meter dash. He posted the 9th fastest time in the event in Friday’s prelims and improved that by five spots on Saturday. Mikey Eiker was 14th in the long jump, Bryson Thomas was 21st in the 200 meter dash and Dominic Cantarini was 27th in the 1600 meter run. Galesburg also had four relay teams in action on Friday, with none moving on to Saturday’s finals. The closest team that came to medaling was the 4×800 meter relay team that placed 10th, just one spot from bringing home hardware.
