Williamstown boys, girls runner-up at Erickson

Williamstown’s Shelby Smith competes in the preliminaries of the 100 during Friday’s Erickson Invitational in Parkersburg. Smith placed second in the finals and later set a meet record while winning the 400.
(Photo by Kerry Patrick)

PARKERSBURG — What should have been a formality turned into a few tense moments for the Parkersburg South boys track team.

Friday night as the host team for the Erickson Invitational, the Patriots owned a comfortable margin in the team standings with two events remaining. Comfortability soon turned into awkwardness as their shuttle hurdle team was disqualified. All of a sudden, the margin between first and second place Williamstown was nine points and a team title still in doubt.

Fortunately, the 4×400 team shaved 10 seconds from their season best and placed first to keep South atop the leaderboard by night’s end at 119 points. The Yellowjackets placed second at 104 points, while Magnolia and Ritchie County followed in a third place tie at 80 points.

Parkersburg South boys coach Jason Jones also pointed to the efforts turned in by sophomore Jordan Foster, who swept the 110 and 300 hurdle events, along with performances in the 800 and mile. The Patriots’ 4×200 took first and continued its success as one of the top relays in the state.

South ventures to St. Clairsville Monday for the Ohio Valley Athletic Conference qualifier followed by Saturday’s championship heats.

“We are coming around into form at the right time,” coach Jones said. “Our mental aspect is in the right place, so it is very exciting.”

On the girls side, the Parkersburg girls concluded a busy stretch of three meets in the span of10 days by pulling away from a Williamstown crew which pulled even with the Big Reds with two events still on the docket.

Behind record-setting performances from Shelby Smith and Alyssa Sauro, the Yellowjackets claimed a total of seven wins compared to five for PHS. Strengthened by individual wins from Morgan Metz (3200), Daysha Hastings (100 hurdles) and Addison Gherke (300 hurdles), along with a victorious shuttle hurdles, the Big Reds capped off the title with 153 points.

Williamstown followed in second place at 144 points, while Parkersburg South and its four total victories took third with 107 points.

“Our girls have had a long April – lots of meets,” PHS girls coach Lia Fleak said. “We have had a ton of meets, but the girls stay strong and stay competitive.

“Ava Sayre has never run track – she struggled in the high jump in the beginning. Last week, she got 4-8. She got 4-10 today. Bella Bowman PR’d in the disc as a freshman. I had three girls get into the finals of the 200. There were a lot of exciting things about today.”

A week of rest and preparing for Friday’s Mountain State Athletic Conference Meet in Charleston awaits PHS.

“I loved this team – they are hard workers, they get along with each other,” Fleak said. “It’s just a nice environment to be in. It’s like a family.”

Individual high-point honors went to Magnolia’s Jenna Blain on the girls side and Ravenswood’s Wyatt Milhoan for the boys field. Blain’s win in the 200 played a role in her 27 points, while Milhoan was the top male sprinter on the evening after winning the 100 and 200 as part of his 25 points.

A total of three meet records were set. South’s 4×200 of Anthony Ott, Navi Hewitt, Eli Bartley and Landon Meredith finished in a time of 1:31.90, which eclipsed Parkersburg High School’s 2009 mark of 1:32.68.

For Williamstown, Sauro erased the 2006 mark of 4:58.18 by Preston County’s Kaylyn Christopher in the mile after the Yellowjacket junior crossed the finish line in 4:49.72. Earlier in the day, Smith missed the mark on her personal best in the 400 but still managed to finish in 58.07 – breaking the 2019 mark of 58.93 set by South’s Samara Nunn.

Smith is savoring every minute as a Yellowjacket and the run the girls program is having in recent years. And she has another season ahead of her next year.

“Personally for me this season, I haven’t been able to hit the times I’ve been aiming for – but I am happy with all my races, happy to be out here and running for my team,” Smith said. “I am going to have a good day, I will have a bad day – as long as I am doing it in order to glorify God, that’s all that matters to me.

“But I’m definitely aiming for lower times.”

The PHS girls nearly made it a fourth meet record after posting a winning time of 1:06.37 in the shuttle hurdle relay. The Big Reds 54-hundredths of a second off a record which has stood for 24 years.

Other top performances on Friday included Ritchie County senior Sydney Kopshina breaking the school record in the pole vault with a winning height of 11-1.25. Tyler Consolidated Amos Kimble went into warp speed over the final 400-plus meters while winning the two-mile.

“The first mile to mile and a half, I was trying to get into first place – I was trying to get to the inside,” Kimble said. “I was on the outside lane the whole time then I was able to squeeze in lane one. After that, I just went and didn’t look back.

“Down the stretch, I heard my dad say they were right behind me. I believed him, so I started kicking. Once I was done, I saw they were like 15 meters behind me.”

Ritchie County’s Alex Rogerson was looking forward to going head-to-head with Milhoan as the top two seeds in the 400, but the meeting never occurred as Milhoan did not enter the race. Rogerson won the event by more than three seconds.

“Milhoan has been beating me all year, but I’ve improved and I think I could have gotten him,” Rogerson said. “I didn’t have anyone to push me, so I was just cruising through my race.”