Region 1 track: Layton boys win 1st region title since Reagan administration; Farmington girls win title on final race
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- Farmington High’s girls track team members mob runner Marianne Barber, second from right, after Barber ran the anchor leg for the Phoenix’s first-place 4×400 relay race, which clinched Farmington the Region 1 championship at Davis High School on Thursday, May 12, 2022.
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- From left, Layton’s Tyler Sanders, Weber’s Cannon DeVries and Layton’s Nick Sanders run in the boys 200-meter race at the Region 1 track and field championships Thursday, May 12, 2022, at Davis High School.
KAYSVILLE — Marianne Barber finished the girls 4×400 relay race in first place and immediately turned around.
The Farmington High senior knew she’d done what she’d needed to do for the Phoenix to win the Region 1 championship on Thursday at Davis High. It was just a matter of what was happening behind her.
The situation going into the final race was that Farmington needed to win the 4×400 and needed Syracuse to finish no better than fifth place in order for the Phoenix to win the region title.
Consequently, Syracuse needed a fourth-place finish in the 4×400 to win the region title regardless of what Farmington did.
Barber started counting.
“I was counting them out, OK, 1… 2… and I got to four and it wasn’t Syracuse and just, yeah, the joy that all the work we put in this whole season, just a lot of joy knowing that our hard work paid off,” Barber said.
The Syracuse runner was in fifth place, a good distance behind the Weber runner down the final 75 meters. Then the Layton runner passed the Syracuse runner.
So the Farmington girls celebrated at the finish line, mobbing Barber as that first-place finish in the 4×400 indeed secured a region championship for them. The final scoring margin was Farmington with 122 points and Syracuse at 120.5 points, with the Phoenix crowned region champions in its first year in 6A Region 1.
“Honestly this is the best team out there, I feel a family connection with each of them,” Barber said. “Feeling the joy that we all worked so hard for this, we all put in the effort to get the championship. It came down to that race, but honestly every single race, we did better than we were expecting so that just led us to that.”
Individually, Barber won the 400 meters and the Farmington girls won the 4×800 relay. Lucy Orison won the 800 meters. There was also a second-place finish for the Phoenix in the 4×200 relay.
Barber, who plans to run at BYU, also finished second in the 100 and 200, both times finishing behind the new 100-meter state-record holder Amare Harlan from Fremont.
Harlan won three events: the 100, 200 and long jump. After setting the new state record in the 100 last week at BYU with a time of 11.58 seconds, Harlan clocked 11.97 in Thursday’s 100 final on a cloudy, cool and breezy day that had varying wind.
In its second-place team finish, Syracuse athletes swept the throwing events and sophomore Cortnie Barker cleared 5 feet, 9 inches to win the high jump, breaking her own 6A state record.
LAYTON BOYS BREAK TITLE DROUGHT
Standard-Examiner records indicate Layton High last won a region championship in boys track and field in 1987.
Layton’s boys track coach, Aaron Bell, thought it to be 1986. Either way, the Lancers last lifted the trophy in the Ronald Reagan administration.
The title drought ended Thursday. Layton accumulated 160 points, a solid cushion over Syracuse’s 135, to claim the Region 1 boys championship.
“I think we’ve always had the potential … but I think we had the confidence this year,” junior thrower Tyler Poole said.
The Lancers, like a lot of other track teams around the state, also had more of their football players come out for the team this year.
Layton had six first-place finishes in the Region 1 meet. Tyler Sanders was involved in three as he won the 200 and ran on Layton’s first-place 4×100 and 4×200 relay teams.
Poole won two first-place medals, breaking his own 6A record in the discus by throwing it 184 feet, 2 inches. He also won the shot put.
While a headwind is usually cause for groans from track and field athletes, Poole pointed out how the headwind helped in his discus throw.
“So when a headwind comes in, it kind of lifts, lifts, lifts it a little bit,” Poole said, noting a headwind will help keep the discus in the air longer when it’s thrown properly.
Layton’s Nick Forsyth set a 6A record in the javelin, throwing it 190 feet flat. It was more than 10 feet farther than the previous mark set by Blake Freeland, now a BYU football player, in 2018.
Another standout in the meet was Weber’s Jett Hill, who won the 100 with a time of 11.23 seconds (.02 faster than second place) and won the long jump with a winning mark of 20 feet, 10 inches. It was his third long jump triumph of the season, but his first 100-meter victory.
GIRLS INDIVIDUAL WINNERS
100 meters: Amare Harlan, Fremont, 11.97
200: Amare Harlan, Fremont, 24.10
400: Marianne Barber, Farmington, 58.16
800: Lucy Orison, Farmington, 2:19.98
1600: Hailey Low, Layton, 5:10.55
3200: Hailey Low, Layton, 11:13.53
100 hurdles: Eden DeVries, Weber, 15.05
300 hurdles: Carleen Miyamoto, Clearfield, 45.41
4×100 relay: Weber, 50.23 (Eden DeVries, Grace Valletta, Ainsli Heap, Monroe Jung)
4×200: Weber, 1:47.19 (Grace Valletta, Elena Hadley, Halle Weston, Annalise Ririe)
4×400: Farmington, 4:04.55 (Kathryn Reaveley, Livia Olson, Jacey Peterson, Marianne Barber)
4×800: Farmington, 9:52.47 (Emma Albrechtsen, Livia Olson, Lucy Orison, Kathryn Reaveley)
Long jump: Amare Harlan, Fremont, 18-02.50
High jump: Cortnie Barker, Syracuse, 5-09
Pole vault: Emily Conlin, Layton, 10-08
Discus: Zoey Wheeler, Syracuse, 104-07
Shot put: Karly Rusch, Syracuse, 34-11
Javelin: Andie Thomas, Syracuse, 105-04
GIRLS TEAM SCORES
1. Farmington, 122
2. Syracuse, 120.5
3. Weber, 107.5
4. Layton, 105
5. Fremont, 101
6. Davis, 100
7. Clearfield, 40
BOYS INDIVIDUAL WINNERS
100 meters: Jett Hill, Weber, 11.23
200: Tyler Sanders, Layton, 22.40
400: Jaron Murri, Syracuse, 50.18
800: Jaron Higgs, Clearfield, 1:56.76
1600: Andrew Harris, Weber, 4:18.44
3200: Matthew Neuenschwander, Farmington, 9:44.59
110 hurdles: Ryan Trane, Weber, 14.65
300 hurdles: Nick Forsyth, Layton, 40.11
4×100 relay: Layton, 43.06 (Nick Sanders, Jaron McMillan, Teague Farr, Tyler Sanders)
4×200: Layton, 1:30.36 (Nick Sanders, Jaron McMillan, Teague Farr, Tyler Sanders)
4×400: Syracuse, 3:24.30 (Noah Horne, Jaren Arnold, Dashaun Wise, Jaron Murri)
4×800: Farmington, 7:52.75 (Matthew Neuenschwander, Ryan Bennett, Trevor Nelson, Spencer Bradshaw)
Long jump: Jett Hill, Weber, 20-10
High jump: Jonathon Smith, Fremont, 6-02
Pole vault: Austin Rallison, Weber, 13-06
Discus: Tyler Poole, Layton, 184-02
Shot put: Tyler Poole, Layton, 54-05
Javelin: Nick Forsyth, Layton, 190-00
BOYS TEAM SCORES
1. Layton, 160
2. Syracuse, 135
3. Weber, 114
4. Davis, 95.5
5. Farmington, 88
6. Fremont, 63
7. Clearfield, 37.5