The IHSAA and IGHSAU state qualifying track & field meets will happen Thursday.
The Class 3A District at Decorah will locally include Hampton-Dumont-CAL. Boys Head Coach Dan Aalbers.
“We’ve done some speed work, we want turn it over still,” Aalbers says. “As far as the long bus ride, a little over two hours, and we’ll probably take a break somewhere, sometimes we hit a roadside park on the way out just to get out and walk around. They’ve they’ve prepared well every time, so I have no doubt we’ll be ready for a quality district meet.”
The Class 2A District at Garner Hayfield Ventura will feature Belmond-Klemme, Iowa Falls-Alden and South Hardin. Tiger girls coach Zach Allison says the team will be tested by some of the most elite marks in Class 2A.
“It’s tough district, I mean, there’s eight districts, they’re all tough,” Allison says. “We’ve got Spirit Lake, Forest City, there’s lots of other good teams there as well. The top two go to state automatically. Maybe we don’t get top two, but we feel like we’ve got a good shot with time on some of them as well, because that district’s going to really be fast and pulling us along.”
The Class 2A District at Grundy Center will include Aplington-Parkersburg, Clarion-Goldfield-Dows, Dike-New Hartford and Grundy Center. The Spartan boys have become accustomed to winning district meet titles.
“Typically in years past, we’ve sent multiple events to state,” Grundy Center boys coach Chris Conger says. “Last year, I think we had a school record, 16 events to state. And this year, it might be different. It might be less events, but trying to put together our best kids and seeing what they can do and make some big noise down there.”
“We don’t really work on handoffs much throughout the year, because we use a ton of different combinations with relays,” AP girls coach Alex Pollock says. “We worked on them a lot this week and it showed at the conference meet. So that was good to see. And then there’s just some little things that we got to make sure that we’re continuing to do. But mostly it’s just continue to do what we’ve done. And I think our girls have got confidence for that and that’s exciting.”
The Class 1A District at Northwood-Kensett will feature Clarksville and North Butler. Bearcat girls coach Colin Freeseman says his team will show up in a big way for the meet.
“The most competitive meets are the ones that kind of mean the most,” Freeseman says. You have all the meets through the year, but when you start getting to the conference meet, you start getting to the qualifier meet, now it’s really easy to get the girls hyped up for those, because they know that those are the ones that really matter and they’ve worked hard all year. The times are trending. We’re doing fine. I like how we’re trending here. So hopefully we catch some good weather and really see a drop in time.”
The Class 1A District at Madrid will include AGWSR and West Fork. Warhawk boys coach Caleb Hovenga says his team has a routine to manifest success.
“We’ve been getting on the bus, it’s been a relatively quiet ride on the way to the meets, just thinking about what does my stuff look like?” Hovenga says. “Some of us are going to be running a race for nine, 10, 11 minutes. What does a good race look like? What is the strategy I need to follow? What what techniques do I need to make sure look absolutely perfect in order for this to look good? So we’re kind of almost manifesting success here as we’re just coming up with our own personal strategies, bouncing off of coaches obviously is helpful there so that way these kids have a huge piece in what it means to be successful. When they are successful, they can take ownership just as much as the rest of us can.”
The meets will start at 4:00, with reports from five sites airing on 104.9 KLMJ and 99 The Wave. The first place finishers at the Class 1A meets will automatically qualify for the state meet. The top two placewinners in each race in Classes 2A through 4A will automatically qualify. At-large qualifiers will be announced Friday.
