State track: Box Elder claims 5A title; Fremont’s Harlan wins 3 events; Roy’s Kingston takes fast 100
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- Box Elder High’s girls track and field team celebrates winning the 5A state championship Saturday, May 21, 2022 at BYU.
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- Fremont’s Amare Harlan wins the 6A girls 200 meter race at the UHSAA state track and field championships Saturday, May 21, 2022 at BYU.
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- Roy’s Parker Kingston runs in the 6A boys 200 meter race at the UHSAA state track and field championships Saturday, May 21, 2022 at BYU.
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- Box Elder’s Sarena Mackley competes in the long jump at the UHSAA state track and field championships Saturday, May 21, 2022 at BYU.
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- Northridge’s Kate Tueller competes in the long jump at the UHSAA state track and field championships Saturday, May 21, 2022 at BYU.
PROVO — There are some state track and field championships that are dramatically decided in the final race, the 4×400-meter relay.
The 2019 5A girls track state championship team race came down to exactly that. In that meet, the Box Elder girls team was leading going into the 4×400 but took ninth in the relay and the team finished fifth.
The 2022 5A girls track did not come down to the final event. In fact, the 4×400 served as four victory laps for the Bees, who won their first girls track state championship since 2017, doing so in rather dominant fashion.
Box Elder accumulated 79.5 points, well ahead of second-place Timpanogos’ 58 points and by midday Saturday, the Bees were all but mathematically assured of the triumph. Box Elder got off to a great start each day of the meet, head girls coach Jeff Rawlins said.
Good times rolled from there.
“They don’t overthink it, they just go out and do their best, and their best is good enough to win. They’ve worked hard the last two or three years for some of them to get to the point where we can win,” Rawlins said.
“We’ve done really well this season and I felt like if we didn’t finish with a state championship, we would’ve ended on the wrong note,” senior thrower Kennadee Vaughn said.
In the javelin, Box Elder had four kids combine to score 20 team points: Ashlyn Reeder (second), Hallie Reeder (third), Keira Braegger (fourth) and Madison Reeder (eighth).
“That’s unheard of,” Rawlins said of getting 20 points in one event. He gave a lot of credit to the team’s javelin and hurdles coach, Katie Johnson.
Vaughn, a senior thrower, won the shot put in dramatic fashion Thursday. She’d already hit her personal record in the event then, before her final throw, Skyline’s Teisa Halaufia threw 38 feet, 11.25 inches to take a 0.25-inch lead on Vaughn.
So Vaughn, who threw a bigger shot put ball this week than she had all year, hit another PR on her final throw to take first.
“That was really scary but it was really awesome at the same time,” she said. “It was roughly 3 feet farther than I had thrown all season.”
BEHS junior Sarena Mackley won the 100 hurdles with a time of 14.98 seconds. An additional handful of high finishes across the board propelled the Bees to the title. Ashlyn Reeder took fifth in the discus and, according to Rawlins, was projected to be ninth.
Shelby Johnson was second at high jump and fourth in the 100 hurdles, Kylie Hadfield went fifth in the 400 meters and the 4×200 relay team took fifth. Mackley had a fourth-place finish in the long jump and went sixth in the 300 hurdles.
The individual standout for area schools in the 6A or 5A girls meet was Fremont junior sprinter/jumper Amare Harlan, who won the 6A 100-meter race, the 200 and the long jump. Harlan set a new personal record in the 200 with a time of 23.83 seconds, 0.08 off the state record held by Enterprise’s Jaslyn Gardner (23.75).
Harlan’s long jump mark — 19 feet, 3 inches — was also slightly off the state record of 19 feet 4.75 inches set in 2001 by Alta’s Amy Menlove. She completes the 2022 track and field season as the owner of the all-time 100-meter record plus 6A classification records in the 200 and long jump.
In possibly the fastest boys 100-meter final ever in Utah, Roy’s Parker Kingston barely got Skyridge’s Smith Snowden at the finish line for first place in the 6A race.
They both clocked 10.54 seconds which, upon further review, yielded that Kingston ran 10.533 and Snowden ran 10.535. Kingston, a BYU football signee, also finished second in the 6A 200, running a 21.33. He helped Roy High, the Region 2 champion, finish seventh place as a team.
Two area schools had multi-event winners. Farmington’s Ethan Peterson won both the 6A 800 and 1600 races, and ran a leg on the Phoenix’s victorious 4×800 relay team. It helped the Farmington boys take second place as a team.
Another area school with multi-event winners was Bear River, which won the boys 4×200 and 4×400 relays in the 4A meet.
In 3A, both the Morgan High girls and boys teams finished in second place. Senior distance runner Kate Heywood won the 1600, 3200 and ran a leg on the Trojans’ first-place medley relay team.
GIRLS
INDIVIDUAL RESULTS
6A 100 meters: Amare Harlan, Fremont, 11.81
6A 200: Amare Harlan, Fremont, 23.83
6A 400: Marianne Barber, Farmington, 55.30
6A high jump: Cortnie Barker (Syracuse) and Cami Cvitkovich (Weber), 5-07.75
6A long jump: Amare Harlan, Fremont, 19-03
5A 100 hurdles: Sarena Mackley, Box Elder, 14.98
5A long jump: Kate Tueller, Northridge, 17-09.75
5A shot put: Kennadee Vaughn, Box Elder, 39-04
3A 400: Grace Gordon, Morgan, 57.13
3A 1600: Kate Heywood, Morgan, 5:17.99
3A 3200: Kate Heywood, Morgan, 11:24.99
3A medley relay: Morgan, 4:18.12 (Brier Galley, Lucy Tripp, Katlyn Sampson, Kate Heywood)
2A javelin: Sarah Snell, St. Joseph, 137-09.5
TEAM SCORES
6A
1. Lone Peak, 106
8. Fremont, 41
9. Farmington, 32
10. Syracuse, 30
5A
1. Box Elder, 79.5
12. Northridge, 22
T22. Bonneville, 8
3A
1. Delta, 96
2. Morgan, 88.5
8. Ogden, 29
14. Ben Lomond, 9
BOYS
INDIVIDUAL RESULTS
6A 100 meters: Parker Kingston, Roy, 10.533
6A 300 hurdles: Jaren Arnold, Syracuse, 39.69
6A 800: Ethan Peterson, Farmington, 1:53.27
6A 1600: Ethan Peterson, Farmington, 4:09.24
6A 110 hurdles: Ryan Trane, Weber, 14.36
6A 4×800: Farmington, 7:43.28 (Matthew Neuenschwander, Isaac Halverson, Ryan Bennett, Ethan Peterson)
6A discus: Tyler Poole, Layton, 175-04
6A javelin: Ethan Ecker, Roy, 195-02.25
4A 4×200 relay: Bear River, 1:30.06 (Tucker Cutler, Kenneth Pingel, Joshua Fowler, Braxton Hurst)
4A 4×400 relay: Bear River, 3:22.40 (Braxton Craven, Ammon Hunter, Kenneth Pingel, Braxton Hurst)
3A 200: Tanner Stanley, Morgan, 22.36
3A 400: Robby Cameron, Morgan, 50.26
3A 3200: Jake Peterson, Ogden, 9:34.7
TEAM SCORES
6A
1. Corner Canyon, 116
2. Farmington, 76
5. Syracuse, 57
6. Layton, 55.5
7. Roy, 42
5A
1. Orem, 125
7. Box Elder, 32
17. Northridge, 10
4A
1. Snow Canyon, 114.5
5. Bear River, 77.5
3A
1. Richfield, 100
2. Morgan, 90
6. Ogden, 40
11. Ben Lomond, 24