Byron’s 4x100 girls relay team and Austin Freerksen head to state
The Byron track and field team will have five representatives for the Minnesota Class A Track and Field Meet this week as Austin Freerksen qualified in the long jump and the girls 4x100 meter relay
team punched their ticket to St. Paul with another strong performance.
Freerksen is making his way to Hamline University on the heels of a great
two-day performance in the long jump at last week’s Section 1AA Championship Meet in Winona. The sophomore was able to take home the section title in the event with a leap of 21-09.25 that beat out Lake City’s Ethan Heitman (21-09.25).
Meanwhile, the girls 4x100 meter relay team of Katie Lambrecht, Payton Sampson, Kirsten Nelson and Olivia Amundson punched their collective with a pair of strong performances. After qualifying for the finals with a time of 50.94 seconds, the quartet turned it up a notch in the final running in a time of
50.33 seconds to beat the qualifying time of 50.68 seconds to go to Hamline.
“The 4x100 relay has been running well,” Byron girls track and field head coach Charro Coleman said. “Just like all of our relays at the end of the season, we knew we had
to run the state standard as we were sitting in that third spot behind the two top teams. They ran fast and had relatively solid handoffs, but with a week to work on everything this team should be able to run under 50 seconds and find themselves on the podium.
Just like all of the girls on the team, they work hard and believe in each other.”
Aside from the state qualifiers, there were several athletes that just missed the qualifying time to head to St. Paul. Hannah Coleman came up just
short with a third place finish in the 300 meter hurdles and recorded a time of 47.58 seconds that just missed the qualifier of 46.64 seconds. The
4x400 meter relay team of Lambrecht, Amundson, Michela Hamilton and Taylor Kreitinger also felt heartbreak as their third- place time of 4:04.74 was less than a second under the 4:04.57 qualifying time.
Other third place finishes for the girls included the 4x800 meter relay team of Kreitinger Hamilton, Paige Halder
and Annika Johnson and Emma Johnson in the pole vault.
Notable finishes for the boys included fourth place finishes for Jake Chilson in the 400 meter dash, Lucas Birch in the 110 meter hurdles and the 4x200 meter relay team of Dylan Olive, Chilson, Trent DeCook and Freerksen.
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