After a season full of progression for each program, the track and field teams for Apollo, Daviess County and Owensboro will compete in the Class AAA Region 1 championships today at Henderson County High School.
The top two competitors in each event at the region meet — which features 10 schools — will automatically qualify for the state meet in Lexington. The next 10 best times/heights/marks from the state-at-large also qualify for the state meet.
Each local coach said their respective team has shown improvement throughout the season.
Apollo head coach Charlie Shoulta said they weren’t at full strength until late in the year.
“We haven’t had our team together a lot this year,” Shoulta said. “We share our athletes with a lot of different things — work, other sports, so when it comes to the end of the season and there are bigger meets, we start coming together.”
Shoulta said it’s been an interesting season, but he’s proud of both teams and what they’ve accomplished over the last few months.
Sophomore Justin Sandefur has progressed to become one of the top 300 meter hurdlers in the state, and the Eagles’ 4×400 and 4×800 relay teams are top in the region.
“Once the pieces start coming together later in the season we really start to get stronger,” Shoulta said. “You can’t do this without a full team effort.”
Daviess County head coach Mark Fortney said both the girls and boys teams are progressing nicely.
“We’ve been consistently getting a little bit better each day,” he said. “I like where we’re at right now. If we keep progressing we’re going to put ourselves in the mix to win on the girls’ side.”
Fortney said one of the factors in winning regionals will be getting the field event athletes to keep improving and scoring higher.
State cross country runner-up Karlee Hoffman is expected to win the two-mile race, and the girls’ 4×800 relay team is ranked No. 1 in the region.
Owensboro coach Matt Morris said heading into regionals he feels confident the team will have a few areas where they really shine.
“This year has been a bit of a rebuilding year with a lot of youth and new talent joining the team,” he said. “We have had some challenges with injuries that have created problems for our relays throughout the season, but we have seemingly overcome those late and look to get back to being competitive. The ladies on the team have worked hard all season, and their dedication is starting to show as they continue to improve.”
For the boys’ team, Imonte Owlsey and Jaiden Kendall are expected to be top scorers in their field events to help the Red Devils earn points outside of the relays.
Meanwhile, the girls’ team is looking to place well in sprint events. Aniyah Greer and Mykael Winstead are strong 100 meter dash runners and the sprint relays look to be very competitive as well.
While Morris is confident in the sprints, he said as a team they have not had all of the performances they would like to have seen. He said the girl’s team is young compared to the rest of the region, which presents its own challenge.
