Boys track and field finishes in fifth place while girls claim third in the OK White Conference meet

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On Thursday and Friday, the track and field team raced in the OK White Conference meet hosted by Lowell. The teams they faced were Byron Center, East Grand Rapids, Forest Hills Northern, Grand Rapids Christian, Northview, Greenville, and Lowell. The boys came in fifth with solid performances, and the girls came in third with plenty of impressive times.

On the boys side, junior Sam Yeager finished second in the 400-meter final with a new personal record of 52.04. Sam also competed in the 800-meter final and finished with a season record of 2:10.08. Sophomore Ethan Krampe also had some great runs by finishing in third place in the 1600-meter final. Ethan beat his old personal record by 8 seconds with a time of 4:36.01. He contributed even more by finishing in seventh in the 3200-meter run. Senior Dallas Hopson performed admirably in hurdles, coming in fourth in the prelims with a new personal record of 16.37. In the finals, he tied that new personal record and notched a fourth-place finish again.

For the girls, many exceptional times were recorded. Sophomore Lauryn Gaskin came in first place in the 200-meter run prelims and destroyed her old personal record by recording a 27.50. In the finals, she ended up in second place, helping the team place high. In the pole vault finals, freshman phenom Brooke Bowers came in first with a score of 11-06.00. Freshman Clara James-Heer also came in first place with a time of 10:39.98. Brooke and Clara were the only two Rangers to get in the first place besides for the 4-by-200 meter relay. The 4×200 relay team got a time of 1.49.85. All these performances helped the Lady Rangers finish in third place as a team.

Both the boys and girls teams face off in the MHSAA LP Region 03-1 on May 21 against a large number of teams and hope to make it a good day at Portage Central High School.