The Le Mars Community track team battled some tough competition at their spring invitational on Thursday night.
The Bulldog girls came away with a fifth-place finish scoring 68 points for the night with a team that brings back a lot of weapons. Those weapons come in a lot of the relay events that Le Mars runs that has already had some success both in the indoor and early in the outdoor season. Head coach Tami Dunn says experience can take the Bulldogs a long way.
Le Mars does not just benefit from experienced leaders. The Bulldogs are also benefitting from a freshman who long jumps and runs some relays with Kenzie Niehus. Niehus scored second place finishes in the long jump and as part of the 4x100m relay. Coach Dunn says she has proven all she wants is to keep getting better.
The night was nowhere close to perfect though as Le Mars missed out on many point-scoring opportunities thanks to bad exchanges. Coach Dunn says those have to be cleaned up if they want to have any amount of success in their relays later in the year.
The Bulldogs are back in action at home again on Monday when they host the Don Shilling Invitational.
The Le Mars boys finished fourth at home on Thursday with a team total of 98 points. They used a lot of near wins to tally their team total. The Bulldogs had a good number of second-place finishes led by Aaron Lee in the 1600m and the 3200m runs. Head Coach Caleb Van Otterloo says it is nice to see Lee’s work in the offseason pay off to start the year.
Another bright spot was Wanding Hosnyang who finished second in the high jump reaching 6’4”. Coach Van Otterloo says it has been nice to graduate a wonderful state champ like Sione Fifita and hardly miss a beat with Hosnyang.
This meet showed that the Bulldogs are just a few split seconds, seconds, and inches away from being a really dominant team at any meet they go to. Coach Van Otterloo says he wants to see that competitive fire spark the guys in the future to get that next position in their competition.
The Bulldogs will host their Don Shilling Invitational on Monday, April 8 in at Jim Lorenzen Field for their next competition.
