By Brennan Stebbins (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
Nevada’s track and field squad had already locked up a conference championship before the final event, but head coach Ryan Watts asked his athletes to “finish this right” Thursday night on the track at McDonald County High School.
The Tigers apparently listened––first the girls 4×400 relay team edged three other schools by roughly two seconds to end with a win, and then Nevada’s boys relay took the track and won with a time of 3:27.17 to break the meet record.
And then Nevada could finally celebrate two team championships after a dominant showing in the Big 8 conference meet that saw the Tigers come away with two high point awards.
“We had a meeting yesterday and went over what everybody had to do for us to do this and pretty much everybody did what we asked them to do and some,” Watts said. “I’m very excited about that. I think our girls were seeded second in the 4×4 and came through in a big way to win it, and our boys have had a lot of success all year and they wanted to cap it off the right way. Capping it with a meet record in the 4×4 was a good way to do it. I’ve been coaching track for a long time but I’ve never had double champions so this might be a high point.”
Nevada’s boys and girls squads combined to win 13 events and Jack Cheaney and Hailey Hearting were directly involved in more than half of those, earning them each individual high point awards when the meet was over.
Cheaney won all four events he entered in––the 100-meter dash, 200-meter dash, 400-meter dash and then the 4×400 relay where he ran the final leg. Hearting earned wins in the long jump, 300-meter hurdles and the 4×400 relay and she added a second-place finish in the 100 hurdles.
“Quadruple conference champ with a meet record to your name, he pulled through,” Watts said of Cheaney. “We had some great performances for the boys in the hurdles. Our good disc thrower was right there, Grady Stewart (2nd place). Our javelin throwers (Gabriel Smith 2nd, Gannon Marquardt 5th) came through. I could just keep talking because we had so many come through for us. Our boys miler, Shaityn Williams, came through well in the mile to win that. There aren’t a whole lot of holes to talk about, we kind of checked every box.”
PHOTOS: BIG 8 TRACK MEET – CLICK HERE
Besides Cheaney’s four wins and Williams’ 1600 victory, the Tigers also got a first-place finish from John Collins in the 300 hurdles, as well as a win with the 4×800 relay.
For Nevada’s girls, Hearting had a hand in three of the team’s six event wins.
“When you have somebody score 30 points alone, that gets you to a good start,” Watts said. “We were able to get the stick around in the relays really well and that’s been something we were working on improving. We had a couple big jumps come through. Some young girls like Cora Braden (freshman) came out big in the triple jump and looked really strong in the sprints, too. Peyton Eaton, a first year track athlete as a senior, broke the school record in the javelin and scored points there. I could go on and on.”
Grace Andersen, another freshman, won both the 800 and the 1600 for the team’s other wins, in addition to Braden’s first-place finish in the triple jump.
“This was a little bit of a unique experience for us because up until this point we’ve been trying a bunch of people in different events and trying to maximize performances,” Watts said. “This is one of the first times we’ve loaded up and said let’s go try to win a meet and spread our points as evenly as we could. We know we’re capable of that and now it’s just sitting down and doing the math, can we win districts as a team or should we prioritize getting as many through to state? The good thing is we’ve got a lot of depth so we can actually have that discussion.
“We’re in a really nasty district with a lot of talent so I’m thinking more towards loading up our relays and getting as many through to state as we can, but after as many points as we scored today we’re going to have to sit down and evaluate,” he said. “We were projecting like 165 on the boys side and ended up 180. The girls exceeded our expectations even more. We knew coming in we were going to have a good shot; we didn’t think it would turn out like this.”
The host Mustangs finished as the girls runner up and placed third in the boys standings. For McDonald County’s girls, Dakota O’Brien won the javelin, Samantha Dowd won both the 100 and 200, and the team’s 4×200 relay earned another win. For the boys, Miguel Mora was the 800-meter run winner, and the 4×200 relay also took first.
Aurora was the third-place finisher in the girls standings and benefited from Makena Hall’s win in the pole vault and 100 hurdles, Avery Miller’s win in the 3200, and the 4×100 relay which took first. Jansen Hunt led Aurora’s boys with first-place showings in the triple jump and 110 hurdles.
Lamar’s girls team won the 4×800 and Addison Brown was the shot put champion. For the boys, Jack Killmon won the high jump, Preston Heins won the long jump, Terren Williams won the discus, Logan Martin won the shot put and the 4×100 also picked up a win.
Cassville’s Aaliyah Franklin won the girls discus and Corbin Rhoads won the boys pole vault.
Monett’s Vayla Smith won the girls 400 and Victor Salas won the boys 3200.
Seneca’s Hadley Hilburn won the girls high jump, and Mt. Vernon’s Hunter Dawson was the boys javelin winner.
Girls team scores
Nevada 162.5
McDonald County 123
Aurora 114
Monett 93
Lamar 76
Seneca 60
Cassville 41
East Newton 35
Mt. Vernon 23.5
Boys team scores
Nevada 180
Lamar 124
McDonald County 103
Aurora 69
Seneca 67.5
Monett 56
Cassville 49
Mt. Vernon 48.5
East Newton 43
