Several track and field athletes turned in outstanding performances at the Mason County Eastern Invitational yesterday.  Olivia Schonert led the way, shattering her own school record in the 200 meter dash with a time of 29.3.  Veronica Hannink also performed well, setting big personal records in both the 100 and the 300 hurdles.  Kija Meads recorded a pair of second place finishes in the long jump and high jump, and also scored points in the 400 meter dash.  On the men’s side, Kyle Tait won the 400 meter dash, just missing the school record with a time of 54.6, while Justin Blake finished second in the two-mile and third in the mile. 

Crossroads returns to action this Saturday when they travel to Brethren for the Bobcat Invitational.

Although thoroughly outnumbered, the Cougar Track and Field team competed well at the Onekama Invite yesterday, finishing third behind Mason County Eastern and Onekama.  Crossroads set seven school records on day, highlighted by Aaron Mabry shattering the school record in the 400 meter dash with a first-place performance of 54.5.  Steve Shank also broke his own school record in the high jump, with a first-place leap of 5’11”, and in the 300 hurdles, with a strong time of 44.2.

 Several Cougars improved their own school records incrementally, with Kyle Tait breaking his own mile record by a tenth of a second with a first-place time of 4:46.0, Olivia Schonert besting her own 200 time by a tenth of a second with a 30.0, and Josh Peters improving his mark in the discus by three inches: 101’9”.

 Although not quite record-breaking, the Kyle Tait and Justin Blake teamed up to go 1-2 in the 800 m, with Kyle winning in 2:09.5 and Justin just behind in 2:11.3

In the final event of the day, Crossroads competed in the men’s 4 x 4.  Aaron Mabry got the Cougars out to a lead, which Kyle Tait stretched out further.  Justin Blake and Steve Shank brought the baton across for the win, and broke the school record with their time of 3:46.3.

 The Cougars are back in action on Friday when they travel to Lakeview.

When he hit the board, everyone watching the long jump gasped.  Even before he came down, the crowd knew it was an incredible jump, and the tape measure confirmed it: Steve Shank had just jumped 20’9.5”, beating the school record—and the closest competition—by more than two feet.  In the first event of the day, Shank had gotten the Cougars off to a sensational start.

 As Shank was wowing the crowd in the long jump, Josh Peters was putting on an impressive show in the throwing events: the junior started his day by breaking his own school record in the discus, cracking the hundred-foot mark for the first time in his career with a heave of 101’6”.  He followed up by taking sole possession of all the throwing records by breaking Joel Finney’s shot put record with a mark of 39’7.5.”

 The Cougars then turned their attention back to the Shank show, watching the junior jumper break another school record, clearing 5’9” in the high jump.  When the track events got rolling, the 4 x 8 relay team of Aaron Mabry, Marius Gramm, Kyle Tait, and Justin Blake rolled across the line in a very strong 8:48.1, breaking the school record by an astonishing two minutes.  Close behind the Cougars was their closest league rival, Onekama; throughout the day, the two teams would battle back and forth for the top league spot.

 After a school record in the 4 x 2 from Steve Shrable, Steve Shank, Zac VanderGoot, and Steve Shank, Kyle Tait picked up an impressive second-place finish in the mile, getting outkicked only by Ben Wynsma of Sutton’s Bay, Division IV’s #7 distance runner at last fall’s cross country state championships.  In the process, Kyle broke his own school record by an impressive eight seconds, crossing the line in 4:46.1. 

 Tait was followed by the school’s 4 x 1 team, which took another school record despite Zac VanderGoot taking a spike to the leg and running with an eighteen-inch gash on his thigh.  The boys were edged, however, by Onekama, who took a nine-point lead on the Cougars. 

Marius Gramm helped close the gap, however, with his third place finish in the 400 meter dash.  Running track’s most intensely painful event for the first time, Gramm powered across the line in 57.9 seconds to take third and bring the Cougars within three.  In the 300 meter hurdles, however, Onekama took a second-place finish, although a gutsy 49.6 fourth-place result from Colby Conklin helped keep Crossroads within striking range. 

 With school-record holder Justin Blake on deck in the 800 meter run, CCA was confident that they could get some points back, and Blake did not disappoint, turning in a strong 2:10.6 performance to take second place, again trailing only Sutton’s Bay’s Wynsma.  Two Onekama athletes finished fifth and sixth, making the score heading into the day’s final two events: Onekama 58, Crossroads 54. 

 In the two-mile, Kyle Tait trailed through the first lap, then slowly moved up into a lead group of four, along with an athlete from Manton, Wynsma of Sutton’s Bay, and Schoedel of Onekama—a runner who had beaten Tait several times during cross country.  At the mile, Schoedel dropped off the lead back, leaving Crossroads with an opportunity to take the lead, if Kyle could win the race.  With two laps to go, the lead group was down to two, and Tait sat on Wynsma’s shoulder until the bell lap.  With 300 to go, Tait made a surge, but Wynsma held him off; with 200 to go, Wynsma began an impressive kick, leaving Kyle ten meters behind, just as he had in the mile.  With hope of victory fading, Kyle began his own kick, finishing the race for time and for pride.

 However, with a hundred to go, the gap between Tait and Wynsma began to close, and with fifty to go, Kyle had battled back onto his shoulder.  As Wynsma moved to lane 2, trying to force Tait to run wide, Kyle cut back to the inside and pulled into a tie for the lead.  For the last thirty meters, the runners raced side by side, until Tait leaned across the finish line, three tenths of a second in front.  The race was his, and the Cougars were back in front.

 That left the 4 x 4.  By unfortunate draw, Crossroads had to run in the first heat, against only one other team; they would have little competition to push them to excel.  Once they finished, Onekama would know what time they needed to run in order to beat the Cougars.  If Crossroads’ time held, they would hold on; if they by one place to Onekama, the two teams would tie, and if they lost by more than one place, the Cougars would lose. 

Steve Shank ran the opening leg, bringing it home with a fast finish and handing off to Justin Blake.  The senior captain turned in another admirable performance, turning in the team’s fastest split on the day and handing off to Aaron Mabry.  By this time, Mabry was running all alone, chasing the ghost of a team that had yet to run, but despite having run on three record-setting relays already, the senior all-purpose athlete turned in a stellar time and handed the baton to anchor leg Steve Shrable.  When Shrable crossed the tape in 3:49.1, another school record, all the Cougars could do was wait and watch.

 Each leg of Onekama’s relay kept pace with the Cougars, and their anchor leg got the baton at almost exactly the same time as Shrable had taken off.  The eyes of two teams bounced between athlete and clock, clock and athlete, as Onekama’s athlete battled toward the finish.  When he crossed the line, the time flashed up on the board: 3:50.5.  The Cougars had prevailed.

 “This was an incredible meet for us,” Crossroads coach Ben Talsma stated afterward.  “We had so many outstanding performances, from Steve Shank’s jumps to Josh Peter’s throws, to Colby Conklin and Marius Gramm scoring points in an event the first time they’d ever run it, to Justin Blake and Kyle Tait’s distance performances, to our record-setting relays, to those dramatic battles at the end of the meet; it was just the way we wanted to start our season.  We still have a lot of work to do, but I was impressed with the way the student-athlete’s competed today, with their passion and enthusiasm, and with the sportsmanship they displayed.  This gives them all a great taste of what track and field is about.”

 On the girl’s side, Olivia Schonert broke her own school record in the 200 meter dash, crossing the line in 30.1.  Kija Meads also showed great promise in the long jump, finishing with a mark of 13’7” in her first-ever experience in the event.  Kelsey Morse and Stephanie Shank also competed well, with both athletes clearing an impressive 4’6” in the high jump.

 The JV team returns to action on Monday at Mason County Eastern.

“On the cold, windy, rain-swept track at Marion High School, the CCA Athletics team got their season off to a solid start. 

 In the sprints, am 11.9 PR by Steve Shrable earned him a spot in the finals of the 100, where he earned sixth place.  Shrable also ran a strong leg of the 4 x 1 relay, teaming up with Tom Creg, Zac Vander Goot, and Taylor Carter to break the school record with a mark of 51.6.  In the final event before weather forced the cancellation of the meet, Aaron Mabry earned the Cougar’s highest finish by placing second in the 400 with a time of 57.1.  Steve Shank took the honors as the top point-scorer for Crossroads, finishing the 110 hurdles in a school record time of 18.5 to earn third place, and recording a PR mark of 5’6” for third in the high jump.

 The only distance race contested was the 1600 m run, in which Kyle Tait turned broke his own school record with a time of 4:54.8.  The mark was good enough for a fourth-place finish, a mere 0.6 from second place.

 Other performances of note include Veronica Hannink’s two PR’s in the long jump and the 100 Hurdles, as well as Stephanie Shank’s PR in the high jump.  Despite the weather, Olivia Schonert nearly broke her school record in the 200 with a mark of 30.8, which was good enough for seventh place. 

 The Cougars return to action next week Friday when they travel to Onekama for the school’s first-ever WMD League Track and Field meet.”