By Fischer Genau DIGITAL MEDIA LEAD
By April, most track teams are out on the field, hurling javelins, clearing hurdles, long jumping, high jumping, and sprinting down the track. But in Big Sky, where the spring snowpack lingers into mid-April, the Lone Peak High School and Ophir Middle School track teams had to get creative.
The OMS team’s first two weeks of workouts were held on a track where they couldn’t see over massive snow mounds piled up on each end, while the LPHS team created a makeshift ring with sandbags to practice shot put. But now that the fields have mostly thawed out toward the end of April, Big Sky’s track teams are hitting their stride.
After a slow start at the Gallatin Valley Invitational on April 12, Lone Peak’s team bounced back at the Laurel Iron Horse Meet, where the girls placed fourth out of 10 teams by scoring 61 points. Junior Harper Morris outran the competition to place first in the 300-meter hurdles, and she also placed fourth in the long jump by leaping over 14 feet. Sophomore Ursula Blyth earned points for her team by placing first in the 1600 meter and second in the 800-meter dash, and senior Haley Hodge contributed by placing in both the 110-meter and 300-meter hurdles.
Anshu Ramesh, a junior, and Boone Jorgenson, a sophomore, also scored to put the boys on the board, with Ramesh placing fifth in the 110-meter hurdles and Jorgenson earning sixth in the 400-meter dash.
The team’s accomplishments are made more impressive by its modest size.
“It’s, like, the smallest track team ever,” LPHS coach Christine Toy told EBS at a recent practice.
Six girls and 10 boys compete for the LPHS track team, and the team’s small size means that the athletes have to stretch themselves. Toy said that typically, track and field athletes pick one event they excel in to score points, but on the LPHS team, all the girls compete in multiple events at each meet.
“Ursula runs the 3200 and the [four-by-100-meter relay], which is not something you usually ever see, to get on the board,” Toy said. “But we do, we get on the board, which is really cool as such a small team.”
The small roster comes with another upside.
“All the kids are really close, which is kind of nice to see,” Toy said. “It’s personalities that you don’t normally see hanging out together. They come here, and it just feels really good to watch them form different relationships than they normally would.”
While Toy wants the team to keep scoring at meets, she is also focused on teaching her students skills on and off the field. They’re working on block starts and throwing technique for shot put and discus, and Toy wants to cultivate life skills too.
“I really like the relationships with the kids,” she said. “There are a lot of life skills that go into track, and it’s cool to watch them build skills that they’ll use forever, hopefully.”
Miners on track
The OMS track team is more than twice the size of the high school team, with 40 kids on the team from fifth to eighth grade. But that’s largely because track is the only team sport offered by the school—Lone Peak also offers baseball, tennis, and golf.
The Miners have competed in three meets so far, the first at Heritage Christian School in Bozeman on April 15, where they had many athletes score in their events.
“Our athletes did great in the throwing events of shot put and discus,” OMS track coach Karen Schreiber told EBS in an email. “We also had a few place in high jump and long jump.”
Bryson Cluff, a seventh grader, earned first place in discus with his monster throw of 82 feet, 10 inches, which sailed 10 feet further than the third-place finisher. Fifth graders Abi Villalobos and Haddie Goulding also stood out, placing in both shot put and discus for the girls.
On the track, seventh grader Zoey Nedved has stood out this season as a sprinter. At the Heritage Christian meet, Nedved placed first in the 100-meter and 200-meter races and ran for second in the 400 meters. Speed seems to run in the family—her younger sister Lucy also excelled, placing fifth in the 400 meters and second in the 800 meters.
As the season winds down, both teams are preparing for their final meets.
OMS hosts its final meet for most athletes on April 29 in Big Sky, with a select group continuing on to the Lions Club meet in Bozeman on May 3. LPHS will send eight athletes to the John Creek Invitational in Anaconda on April 29, before closing out the season at home during the Lone Peak Invitational on May 3.
