CARLISLE — This was not supposed to happen, at least on paper. Pre-meet seeding for Saturday’s girls side of the Raccoon River Conference meet had Perry penciled in for 35 points.
No one bothered to tell the Jayettes.
Individual Perry athletes and each Perry relay team either matched — or, more often — well exceeded their seeding. The result was a flipping of the numerals, as, instead of 35 points, the Jayettes scored 53, a performance that drew the praise of head coach Matt Hardy.
“The majority of the girls competed at and extremely high level,” he said. “A great effort.”
Carlisle piled up 170.5 points to win the team title, the Wildcats barely edging ADM,at 168.5, for the top spot. Carroll was a distant third a 99, with Boone (83), Ballard (69), Bondurant-Farrar (60), Perry (53) and Winterset (34) completing the field.
Perry may have finished seventh, but with the team performing at their best level there were few donning Jayette blue who were not pleased with the 53 points.
Senior Sid Vancil claimed the RRC crown in the 800 by speeding home in 2 minutes, 26.88 seconds after entering as the two-seed.
Fellow senior Grace Stewart was seeded fourth in the 3000 but shattered her own personal record by nearly 15 seconds while setting a new school standard of 11:14.89. Carlisle’s Megan Sievers won, in 11:12.86, with Stewart beating Ballard’s Ellen Twedt over the final meters by .51 to claim second. The old PHS mark of 11:16.12 had been established by Daphne Baumgartner in 2010.
Stewart would later add a fifth-place effort, in 5:39.45, in the 1500.
Vancil was third, in 1:03.37, and Jasmine Shriver seventh, in 1:07.86, in the 400. Both were career-best times. Shriver also posted a career-best in the 200, improving from the ninth seed to cross fifth in 28.85.
A season-best clocking of 1:56.8 by Shriver, Vancil, Kennedy Tunink, and Quinn Whiton lifted the sprint medley team to third place, with Tunink, Stewart, Whiton, and Isabel Saemisch sixth in the distance medley in 4:58.66.
Placing seventh was the 4×200 (2:05.5) foursome of Tunink, Cindy Troung, Sandra Perez, and Jaqueline Guardado, with the 4×800 (11:58.61) quartet of Guardado, Troung, Joanna Rodriguez, and Emma Humpal also seventh.
Humpal, Guardado, Perez, and Tunink teamed for eighth in the 4×100 (1:00.23), with Shriver, Saemisch, Whiton, and Vancil eighth in the 4×400 (4:44.66).
Perry’s lone points in the field events came from Whiton, who improved from the seventh seed to land fifth in the long jump, 14 feet, 2-1/2 inches from the board.
