LEXINGTON – Top Middle School results at their state meet on Saturday makes for a bright future for an already successful Marshall County High School program. At the KHSAA State Track and Field Championships on Saturday, May 23rd, seven top-10 performances were turned in as well as a few PR’s set.
CLICK HERE for last weeks state meet story and results.
Boy’s Head Coach Jared Rosa, reflected back on the state meet in which he felt his boy’s team did great.
“Just about everyone medaled in their events and I was very pleased”, Rosa said. “Some of the highlights were Casey Gregory who was 5th in Pole Vault and the boys 4×800 team who were 3rd behind St. X with a new state record and last years state champ Dunbar HS. The boys 4×400 was 6th just .3 away from the school record, Nathan Solomon finished 8th in the 200 and 11th in the 400 and Collin Gunn ran a season best 4:39 in the mile.”
Coach Rosa said of his boy’s team, “They could not have been easier to coach this year. They did everything that was asked of them with no dispute. They bought in very quickly and did everything right. I was overall happy with results. The 3A state meet is like a huge college meet with all the talent there and it is very difficult to compete there, but they did and it really spoke highly of the leadership within that senior class. I look to reload for next year and make another run at Regional.”
Girl’s Head Coach Cory Westerfield was also equally as pleased with their performance at the state meet.
“Our class is the largest class in the state and this year the competition was brutal”, Westerfield said. “Our girls 4 x 100 ran the second fastest time in school history and finished 11th. Overall, we ran very well. Our only medalist was Stephanie Russell in the 300 meter hurdles. We had a shot at a couple of school records but fell a little short on both of those. We ran some good times, threw some good distances and jumped some good heights.”
Coach Westerfield said his team finished in the middle in most of their events and felt like that was pretty good considering the competition. “Overall, I felt like we had a really good day and was happy with our performance”, Westerfield said.
“This has been an awesome year for us. We were definitely senior-led but if you look through our results for the year, you can see that we have a lot of talent coming up with our juniors, sophomores and a large and talented freshman class.”
Westerfield said he will really miss the seniors who have stuck together and accomplished a lot in their track careers at Marshall County.
“I feel like they have set a standard of excellence that future classes will hopefully see and try to rise up to that level as well”, Westerfield said.
The six seniors who will continue to run track in college are Kara Kelley, Brandy Baas, Lexie Myers, Sydney Goff, Skylar VanMeter and Nathan Solomon.
Special thanks to Angela Carnine, Deborah Blankenship and Starla Solomon for the photos. Click on the photos for a larger view and to scroll through.
