The Saline Reporter
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Girls third, boys 11th at state finals
Girls' 3,200-meter relay wins state title, Post posts top boys' finish
By Jerry Hinnen, Staff Writer
PUBLISHED: June 7, 2007
Unlike in 2006, the Saline track teams didn't come home from Saturday's state meet at East Kentwood with a second state championship.
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But that didn't mean they didn't come back with plenty to remember: one relay championship, a number of All-State performances and school records, and a top-five team finish for the second straight year.
But this time it was the Saline girls who crashed the leaderboard. Led by the state champion 3,200-meter relay team of Meagan Creutz, Lindsey Cummings, Alex Leptich, and Kate Carter, the Hornets finished third with 43 points, 14 back of runner-up Detroit Mumford.
"What's most impressive is that when you go to the state meet, especially with young athletes, sometimes things can sort of blow up," said coach Mike Smith. "That didn't happen. We knew, after Regionals, that if we ran the way we were capable of we be in the top five. We'd be disappointed if we hadn't."
The defending state champion Saline boys finished 11th with 18 points. The Hornets had hoped to claim a higher finish, but with the team still within eight points of the top five and suffering a number of unfortunate breaks (including the first failed hand-off disqualification of the season for the 800 relay team), co-head coach Brian Boze remained more than proud of what his team had accomplished.
"Our guys ran, and jumped, and threw as well as they could have," said Boze. "We performed better than expected in a lot of areas. You can't ask for anything more than that."
In the end the Hornets boys claimed five All-State performances. Leading the way was senior Branden Post, who broke his own school record and finished third in the 300 hurdles with a time of 38.59. Post finished only .07 behind runner-up Danny Fortson of Pioneer and .21 behind champion Kevin Lanier of Lakeland in arguably the most exciting race of the entire meet.
"Even though I finished third, I think it worked out all right," Post said. " It was a great race. I wouldn't have wished for more than that."
Elsewhere, Joey Everett and Gabe Helmuth continued Saline's season-long excellence in the throws by finishing fifth in the shot put (with a distance of 53'1") and eighth in the discus (150'0"), respectively; Blake Johnson took seventh in the 1,600 with a time of 4:21.59; and the 3,200-relay team of Brian Hernandez, Johnson, Joe Zill, and Kyle Zill, who took fourth with a time of 7:49.3.
As an example of how competitive the meet was, Boze pointed to the 3200 relay team.
"That was a season-best time by five seconds and the third-best time in school history," Boze said, noting that one of the two SHS times ahead of it is the state record, "and they finished fourth."
The Saline girls posted nine top-eight finishes across eight events. In addition to running the third leg of the victorious 3,200 relay, freshman Alex Leptich took third in the1,600 (5:02.4) and sixth in the 3,200 (11:21.5).
"Coach Smith comes up with these workouts, and they're hard, but they always pay off big-time," Leptich said of the distance team's big day. "He told us all year we were going to be running for a championship."
Sophomore Corrie Castro competed in four events and made All-State in all four, taking sixth in the 200 dash (25.64); with Kim Miller-Tolbert, Mary Rzepka, and Stefanie Gallardo, fourth in the 400 relay (49.49); with Lauren Zakrasjek, Taylor Franz, and Miller-Tolbert, fourth in the 800 relay in school-record time (1:42.71); and with Creutz, Carter, and Zakrasjek, fifth in the 1,600 relay (3:59.3).
Carter (2:15.7) and Creutz (2:16.4) finished fifth and sixth in the 800.
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