PV wins state title

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By Sean Moeller | Saturday, May 19, 2007 1:18 AM CDT | () comments

DES MOINES — Three weeks ago, the Pleasant Valley boys track team had a dreamy           weekend at Drake Stadium. It broke five school records and had everything exceed the wildest of expectations.

Thursday — the first day of the Iowa state track meet — was nothing like that weekend. The Spartans saw distance ace and defending state champion Devin Allbaugh saddled with dehydration and subsequently replaced with an alternate on the 3,200 relay team, which placed fourth.

Mike Hemming didn’t break 50 seconds in the open 400,            failing to qualify for today’s finals. These things wouldn’t have happened three weeks ago.

The Spartans wiped the slate clean Friday, starting fresh in a bid to place high in the Class 4A team race.

They got back on track with a state title in the distance medley relay, an event they won at the Relays. They even shaved a few tenths of a second from their school record, fighting off           Davenport North for the win.

“I felt like I had to make up for (Thursday),” said Hemming, whose split was 48 seconds in the 400 leg of the medley. “I was running with a vengeance. Everybody has bad races. We talked back at the hotel today and decided to forget that (Thursday) even happened. It’s a three-day meet, not a one-day meet. We still have a lot of chances to run fast.”

The PV team — made up of Drew Shradel, Bruce Clark, Hemming and anchor Blake Irwin — ran 3:27.95 to the            Wildcats’ 3:30.90.

Both teams got fast 800 legs from Irwin and Stephen Arvanis. The two battled each other in the open 800 at last week’s district meet, and Irwin got the better of Arvanis on Friday.

“He always has that energy at the end,” Hemming said of Irwin. “We know Blake can take care of business, but we felt like we had to give him the lead.”

Clinton’s Holmes, Andrew’s Manders are runners-up

Neither Andrew’s Corey Manders nor Clinton’s Ethan Holmes were in the positions they thought they’d be in Friday afternoon on a considerably warmer day at the three-day, Iowa state coed track meet.

Manders, who failed to qualify in the 400 hurdles for the state meet in 2006, had the Class 1A’s fastest district time last weekend and was ranked No. 1 entering the timed finals at Jim Duncan Track.

“I didn’t even make it to state last year because I got screwed,” Manders said. “If I had been in any other district in the state, I would have made it and gotten a medal here, but I was fifth in our district.

“I felt a lot of pressure being ranked first. I thought I’d have to run in the 54s to win it, and I was right, I just didn’t run the time. I kicked the fourth or fifth hurdle, and it slowed me down a lot. I felt like the last few hurdles went well though.”

Manders finished as the state runner-up in 55.91 but couldn’t match the early race acceleration of Tri-County’s Andy Koehn.

“This past night, I thought about the race a lot, and I just told myself, ‘Rankings don’t mean nothing,’” Manders said. “My hurdle coach helped me a lot that way. He told me I had to find a different purpose to run to. I figured that we live three hours away from here, and all these fans came to watch me run. I didn’t want to disappoint them. I don’t think I did.”

Holmes, just a sophomore, found himself in the lead of the Class 4A 400 hurdles entering the homestretch.

He was ahead of the hurdler who beat him on the same track last month — Marshalltown junior Kellyn Fogarty — and en route to dusting his previous fastest time in the event.

“I thought I had him. He was just too fast,” Holmes said. “He scared me, but I just got out there and ran my race. I heard his footsteps. I felt him. He’s just that much tougher.”

Fogarty got Holmes by a lean — edging him 53.55 to 53.56.

“I think if I would have known I was going to be .01 away from winning a state title before the race, I would have run that .01 faster,” he said. “But I would have been happy to do anything better than last year (13 th at the state meet).”

Sean Moeller can be contacted at (563) 383-2288 or at smoeller@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at www.qctimes.com.