For the second time in five days, the Camp Verde High School track and field team competed, the latter of the two at the Red Rock Invitational on Saturday, April 1, at Sedona Red Rock High School.
According to head coach Mike O’Callaghan, some of the Cowboys were under the weather, leaving the team with reduced numbers, but some of those who did compete turned in good performances amongst the field of 20 teams.
“We’ll see how the kids stack up against what will be a step up in competition level,” O’Callaghan said. “Right now some of the work we’re doing is starting to get a little shorter but a little quicker.”
O’Callaghan looked at the larger meet as somewhat of a workout since his team is now working on its speed. Getting the Cowboys runners, jumpers and throwers mixed in with other athletes benefits them more than just practice with their teammates.
Leading the way on the boys side was sophomore Chris Holdgrafer, who won the freshman/sophomore division 110-meter hurdles by more than a second with a personal best 16.72, automatically qualifying him for the 2017 Arizona Interscholastic Association Division IV State meet. He also tied for eighth in the high jump.
Junior Nate Schultz was fifth in the 300-meter hurdles, finishing in 43.77 seconds, a state automatic time, the third event in which he holds an automatic standard. He also finished second in the triple jump at 42-06 and third in the long jump at 20-06.75, both of which are season bests.
Junior Matthew Wade won the discus at a personal best and state automatic distance of 125-02.
The team is in a stage of the season where it is working to improve but at the same time undertaking a different type of workload.
“Some of the kids are tired, which I would expect, because of the work we’ve been doing,” O’Callaghan said. “By next week hopefully, [we’re] starting to see quicker times.”
Sophomore Joseph Jones took seventh in the 400-meter dash in the freshman/sophomore division and sixth in the 800-meter run. Sophomore Damian Wathogoma was second in the freshman/sophomore discus at 97-07. The team’s varsity 4×100-meter relay team was 12th and the 4×400 team 11th.
On the girls side, senior Alana Neary recorded a personal best 18.24 in the 100-meter hurdles, tying for sixth overall.
Junior Bryanna Truett finished eighth in the 300 hurdles in 55.12 seconds, a personal best and state provisional time. Truett also tied for eighth in the high jump at 4-06, and took 11th in the triple jump, leaping 28-04.50 feet.
Senior Shayla Campbell-Kilburn was 12th in shot put and sixth in the discus, and freshman Elizabeth Crofutt was sixth and 11th, respectively, in the freshman/sophomore division. Fellow ninth-grader Destiny Dowdle was 12th and fifth, respectively.
Without runners in the varsity division, the Paniagua sisters turned in a few top-15 performances in the freshman/sophomore division. Edith took eighth in the 200-meter dash with a personal best 30.34 and seventh in the 400. Eliana was fourth in the 800 and 12th in the 1,600-meter run with a personal best 6:22.64.
The Cowboys next compete on Saturday, April 8, at the Westside Invitational at Deer Valley High School.
