Following up on the Eastern Relays the Lewis Cass Boys’ Track and Field team won the Cass County meet on Saturday, April 27. Logansport, Pioneer, Caston, and Lewis Cass were the teams competing in the meet. The Lewis Cass girls’ team finished in the meet in third place. The boys’ team worked hard preparing for the meet and it paid off.
The boys’ team’s start to the season was rough, when asked coach Benner if he believed the team could win he said, “At the start of the season, I would have said no. We lost last year to Pioneer and they weren’t expected to lose too many athletes. Compare that to us, we lost a lot of quality seniors and one of our best athletes Gavin Griffin. We’ve had some new guys show up this year who have never done the sport before and they have gotten excited and injected new life into this program. I was able to crunch a few numbers based on seed times before the meet and when I looked at it, it was going to be close, but if we ran well, we had a shot.” The team is very young, it mainly consists of freshmen and sophomores. Out of the team, the Kings had some very strong performers. Coach Benner said, “Julian Levine always shows up strong in the high jump. We have a really good 1-2 combination in the hurdles between Colton Copeland and Matthew Wallace. Our distance guys didn’t win any races, but they were able to take a lot of 2nds and 3rds. I think the surprise of the meet though was Jed Frey winning the 200 m dash.”
The team competed well in the meet not letting other teams start to have an advantage. Coach Benner said, “In order to pull off what we did, it had to be a team effort. Pioneer won 8 of the 16 events, but they failed to score in 5 events. We scored in every event except the pole vault which is also the only event we don’t contest. 15 Lewis Cass boys competed in the meet and 14 of them scored at least a point. We had a couple of guys who were not feeling well and we were able to count on our backup runners to secure the victory. We have a very deep team right now and they are very young. We are optimistic that we will have success for years to come.”
The boys’ team is preparing for the sectional on May 16 at Kokomo High School. Coach Benner said, “The top 3 in every event move on to Regionals. Right now, Julian is favored in the high jump. Kolten Young and Jed Frey are sitting in 3rd and 4th in the 200M. Kolten is also 4th right now in the 400M. Ben Jay and Kale Skiles have run the 4th and 5th fastest times in the mile in the Sectional, and Kale has the 3rd fastest time in the 2 mile. Both our 1600 Relay and 3200 Relay teams are in the top 5. It all comes down to who enters into what races and whether we show up ready to race that night.”
Senior L.J. Hillis played an important role in winning the county meet. With this year being L.J.’s first year running track, he is easily one of the leading competitors for Cass track. When asked how well he performed in the meet L.J. said, “I competed in the 4x800M, 400M, and 4×400 relay. The 4×400 relay at county was one of the most competitive races of the year, we beat our past record by seven seconds.” The senior is preparing for sectionals. L.J. said, “We are excited for sectionals, we have some events that can make it to regionals, and that is an exciting opportunity.”
The Kings are running the sectional on May 16 at Kokomo. Come out and support your Kings!
