YOUR AD HERE »

Huskies team up at Horizon Relays

Chris Freud

THORNTON – Take that, Lance Pratt.Battle Mountain track and field met up with an old friend Saturday at the Horizon Relays.The Huskies’ boys finished eighth in the predominantly 5A field, beating among others – Centaurus, coached by some guy named Lance Pratt, who coached at Battle Mountain for a while.”It was fun for us and our kids to see Pratt again,” Huskies coach Rob Parish said. “Lance was a great coach at Battle Mountain. He laid the groundwork for this group.”And the groundwork is looking good. Normally dispatches from Huskies’ track start with the boys’ 3,200-meter relay team, but Battle Mountain has another quartet closing in on a school mark.Ascher Robbins, Aaron Wilcox, Andreas Apostal and Todd Walked closed within 1 second of the 800 relay record by finishing eighth. The 3,200 was tinkering a little bit, but still finished sixth. In a chance look at different people in different places in the 3,200, Derek Byron, Jonny Stevens, T.J. Simpson and Eric Garcia came home in 8 minutes, 41 seconds.Battle Mountain did shine in a different long relay, the distance medley, which amounts to a 4,000-meter race. Byron, Travis Landauer, Jonny Stevens and Tony Crisofulli clocked an 11:17.”It’s an unofficial school record,” joked Parish about the unusual format of the race, noting that Stevens had a strange-sounding split of 3:22 in his 1,200-meter leg of the relay.

Since this was a relay meet, even the field events were scored as a team. The Battle Mountain javelin team, led by Billy Shue’s chuck of 133 feet, finished fourth in its only appearance of the year – the event is not an official CHSAA discipline.”If Billy Shue had a spear all the time, he’d never go hungry,” Parish joked.Mitch Gray and Lucas Brown rounded out that “team.”The football offensive line was well-represented as Gray, Brown and Punky Carlos took seventh in the shot put. Levi Horn, Kodi Wyatt and Charlie Tedstrom combined for sixth in the pole vault.On the girls’ side, Max Van Dyke, Kayleigh Quintana and Jenna Oppenheimer placed in the discus. Lexi Horn and Olivia Fauland put together a sixth-place performance in the pole vault.In the 800 relay, the Lady Huskies (Madelyn LyBarger, Maddy Trtanj, Kate Epstein and VanDyke) were 10th.Next up for the Huskies is the Mickey Dunn in Grand Junction Saturday. After two relay meets to start the season, Parish is curious to see how the team does in individual events.”Our team is well-balanced,” he said. “We have some quality athletes with good performances all around. We’re pretty excited to go to our first open meet, and see how all these athletes do open events.”Sports Editor Chris Freud can be reached at 748-2934 or cfreud@vaildaily.com.


Support Local Journalism