Prep notebook: Day 1 state track and field meet roundup

Presley Smith got the job done on day one of the 4A state track and field meet Thursday in Lakewood. The Battle Mountain junior started the day by helping the Huskies sprint medley team advance to Friday’s final. The Huskies placed second to Windsor with a time of 1 minute, 49.94 seconds, two-tenths from a school record they set at their home invitational this past April.

“They looked good,” head coach Rob Parish said.

Smith returned after a lightning delay to post the second-best time in the 400-meter dash prelims. Her 58.12 broke the 25-year-old school record of Stephanie Feldhaus (58.41). Smith’s biggest competition in Saturday’s final will likely be from Niwot’s Madison Shults, who ran 57.21 in the prelim.

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Other results from Thursday

• Zakia Shreeve ran a season-best 16.42 in the 100-meter hurdles to advance to the finals on Saturday at 9:53 a.m.
• The Battle Mountain 4×200-meter relay team placed seventh in its heat and 11th overall in 1:47.85 to miss qualifying for the final.
• Battle Mountain’s Tyler Heimerl jumped 16 feet, 6 inches to place 11th in the long jump. Heimerl will also compete in the high jump and triple jump.

Battle Mountain’s Stella Jackson jumped 9-08 to place 12th and Eagle Valley’s Kenzie Cosper went 9-2 to take 14th in Thursday’s girls pole vault competition. After going 10-04 to win the league title, Cosper was understandably disappointed with how her season culminated.

“Everything up to league was a great season; I really enjoyed it,” she said, noting that she improved her personal best by 14 inches this year. “And that was really great. I just like my team — it was a really fun season.”

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Cosper said the fact she decided to use a longer pole for the first time in Thursday’s competition may have thrown her off just a bit.

“My problem was I wasn’t really getting up high enough,” she explained. “I was kind of just bending over and falling flat on it and then letting it throw me into the bar instead of getting up and over the bar.”

Only a sophomore, Cosper intends on returning to Jeffco Stadium.

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“I’m definitely doing a lot better next year,” she promised.

“I was ahead of myself this year. I was thinking about my higher jumps before I was needing to. I should have just went step-by-step and slowly progressed instead of thinking, ‘oh, bigger pole, bigger jump.'”