“I hear that train a comin’ rollin’ round the bend…”
– Johnny Cash
The late, great Man in Black could have been signing about the steamrolling Ladies in Blue from the Jefferson track and field team.
The Blue Jays are chewing up the track as they near the state depot Friday and Saturday for the Class 2 championships in Jefferson City.
Jefferson ran, jumped and threw to its third championship in as many weeks Saturday at Hillsboro. After winning the Jefferson County Activities Association crown at Festus two weeks ago and a Class 2 District 1 title in Charleston on May 6, the Blue Jays outscored second-place Clark County 149-102 to capture the Sectional 1 championship.
The Blue Jays are sending athletes in 16 events to the capital city, four events more than they qualified for last year, when they finished tied for seventh. And the drum major for this dynamic band is sophomore Anna Heacock, who notched 40 points Saturday, the maximum possible for an individual athlete. She accounted for 38 points at both the conference and district meets.
“I told Anna, ‘I’m at a loss for words,’” Jefferson head coach Alex Rouggly said. “She’s just a rock star. She told me she wanted to score 40 points for her team and she did it. She’s a very special kid who works extremely hard.”
Heacock won all four of her sectional events: the long jump (17-1), 100-meter hurdles (15.47), 300 hurdles (47.11) and 200 (26.84). After finishing fourth in the 100 hurdles and fifth in the 300 hurdles at state last season, Heacock is fine-tuning her approach to this year’s competition.
“I’m really going to work on that fifth and sixth hurdle in the 300,” she said.
Unlike Heacock, who has two more years to feather her nest of state medals, senior Sarah Handrahan will have a different accomplishment in the bag when she travels to state. A couple of hours after she finished second in the javelin Friday with a personal best throw of 109 feet, Handrahan walked with the rest of her classmates at their graduation ceremony and received her diploma.
Handrahan, who led the Blue Jay softball team to the school’s first state trophy last fall and plans to continue her softball career at the University of Nebraska-Kearney, said the newly constructed runway for the javelin at Hillsboro helped her reach a new personal record.
“We’ve done a lot of preparing this week,” she said. “I was right there on the edge of third or fourth (place). We’ve been working a lot on getting my approach to be faster and my release to be stronger and it’s helped out a lot.”
Handrahan also won a sectional title in the discus with a throw of 110-11, two feet ahead of second place.
The rest of the Blue Jays to qualify for state are Jill Akins (fourth in the pole vault, 17-6); Jena Courtois (second, triple jump, 34-4.25); the 4x800 relay team of Cheney Ervin, Jordan Heacock, Kendall Runzi and Macy Sample (fourth, 10:43.19); Taya Allen (fourth, 100 hurdles, 17.55); Abi Chipps (third, 100, 13.04), the 4x200 relay (Chipps, Courtois, Sydney Weik and Holly Welker, second, 1:50.13); Jordan Heacock (third, 1,600, 5:51.99); the 4x100 relay (Courtois, Chipps, Weik and Welker, third, 51.76); Runzi (fourth, 800, 2:36.26), Jordan Heacock and Cheney Ervin (third and fourth, 3,200); and the 4x400 relay (Allen, Runzi, Weik and Chipps, second, 4:21.21).
The 4x100 and 4x800 relay teams set school records at the sectional meet, the latter group improving the mark by 26 seconds.
“We feathered out a little bit toward state (last year), and that’s not to take anything away from that great group, but we’re going to try to break through some walls this week,” Rouggly said. “We finished third and fourth in some events today and we’re going to have to step it up in those.”
The Jefferson boys finished 10th at sectionals with 25.5 points scored by three seniors in the field events.
Jacob Butcher qualified for state in the pole vault with a second-place finish of 11 feet. Daniel Straughn (second, 141-3) and Dylan Roth (fourth, 135-6) both made the state cut in the discus.
Three Hornets headed to Jeff City
Crystal City competed Saturday in the Class 1 Sectional 1 track and field meet in Montgomery City and advanced three athletes to the state meet.
Senior Sam Foster won the pole vault, clearing 13 feet, and will make his second appearance at state. So will sophomore Emma Shirley, who finished fourth in the 400 in 1:04.25 and was third in the 200 in 27.22. Senior Abby Foster was second in the 800 in 2:36.10.