DES MOINES — Two times third had to sound like wonderful arithmetic to head coach Greg Thompson and his Panorama girls track team.
A season removed from their first-ever team trophy (awarded only to the top three teams in each class) the Panthers repeated the feat at the State Track Meet Saturday, using a series of strong final-day results to secure their spot.
The Panthers qualified in 15 events last year and finished with 40 points in placing third. This season they participated in 14 events and finished third again, this time with 38 points, one behind second-place Aplington-Parkersburg.
Mid-Prairie repeated as team champions. Last year fueled by the Hostetler sisters, this year only junior Marie remained, but she won the 1500 and 3000, anchored the winning distance medley and placed second in the 800 to account for 38 of her team’s 49 points.
A-P sophomore Sophia Jungling helped provide 26 of the 39 Falcon points to insure the team had just enough to hold off Panorama, who led after each of the first two days.
The Panthers were much more reliant on overall team depth, and that was evident in a strong Friday effort in rainy and less-than-desirable running conditions.
The distance medley of Hope Arganbright, Kassidy Bremer, Bailey Beckman and Gwen Steffen placed third in 4 minutes, 12.94 seconds after qualifying fifth in 4:21.45. The time and place was a marked improvement over the fifth-place 4:17.03 recorded last season.
Morgan Johnk ran a 15.85 that finished 10th overall in the 100 hurdles, with the 4×100 unit of Beckman, Johnk, Arganbright and Bremer just missed a qualifying spot by placing ninth in 51.51, only .01 from eighth place and just .02 from sixth or seventh.
The 4×400 team of Beckman, Olivia Steffen, Lydia Lindstrom and Gwen Steffen qualified for Saturday’s finals with a third-seed time of 4:05.76, a drop of 6.27 seconds off their number-seven state seed.
Also in action Friday was Luke South, who had qualified in the 110 hurdles. Unfortunately, South was disqualified and did not reach the finals. Neither did high jump senior Gracen Welberg, who did not participate.
Johnk finished eighth in the high jump after clearing 5 feet, 2 inches. The top six finishers all cleared 5’4, with attempts required/total misses settling the order. Three girls cleared 5’2, with OABCIG senior Sydney Durbin placing seventh, while Johnk edged out AC/GC freshman Chloe Largent for the final scoring spot.
Lydia Knapp kept her end of the bargain on the throwing fields north of Drake Stadium. There the Panther senior repeated as the fourth-place finisher at the state meet in the discus with a best spin of 124 feet.
Jungling and Hostetler were 1-2 in the 800 in 2:16.38 and 2:17.91, but Gwen Steffen dropped over six seconds from her No. 15 seed of 2:27.48 to speed to sixth, scoring an important three team points with a clocking of 2:21.31. She had been 11th (2:24.18) at the state meet last year.
With Hostetler and Jungling both in the 1500, it was crucial for Panorama sophomore Ella Waddle — fourth Thursday in the 3000 — to score as many points as possible. Hostetler (4:40.63) and Jungling (4:46.81) were 1-2, but Waddle rose to the occasion, placing sixth and scoring three more points with a 4:55.98, edging friendly rival Kate Crawford of AC/GC at the line, the latter finishing .04 ticks back for seventh place.
As the final event, the 4×400, took to the track, A-P was finished a 39 points, with Panorama at 33 and a hard-charging Western Christian threatening to bump the Panthers with 26 points.
Western Christian was the top seed. A win, and Panorama finish in sixth or worse, would send the Wolfpack to third and drop the Panthers out of the trophy ceremony.
Treynor (4:01.88) won the relay, with Western Christian (4:02.03) second and KP-WC third (4:02.56), meaning all the Panthers needed was a better-than-eighth finish. The Panorama loyalists need not have worried.
Beckman gave the team a strong first leg, with Olivia Steffen following suit on her leg. Lindstrom’s third leg had the Panthers in comfortable position, and Gwen Steffen was not about to surrender spots on the track, racing home as the foursome finished fourth in 4:04.62, scoring five points and outdistancing WC, 38-34 for third place overall.
Arganbright, Beckman, Bremer, Johnk, Knapp and Brooklyn Behrends are all seniors, with Abbi Brown, Payton Douglass and Lindstrom are juniors, while Shey Storesund, Waddle, and Olivia and Gwen Steffen are sophomores and Payton Beckman is a freshman.
Panther boys team qualifier Welberg is a senior, with South a junior.
