The Mid-Prairie Golden Hawk boys and girls track and field teams traveled to Eddyville-Blakesburg Friday for the class 2A state qualifier meet.
In order to be an automatic qualifier for the state meet in Des Moines an event or athlete must finish as champion or runner-up at the qualifier meet. Other events can still qualify but then need to advance through performance comparisons across the state. The Mid-Prairie girls finished second in the team race, dropping the district title to Williamsburg by a tight 145 to 142 final margin.
The Mid-Prairie girls qualified Marie Hostetler in the 800 with her championship time of 2:23.60. Mitzi Evans also got through in the 800 as runner-up with her race of 2:24.04. Hostetler was also a winner in the 1500, finishing in 4:47.16. Hostetler made it triple gold with a win in the 3000 with her time of 10:47.44. She spoke after her 3000 about the event “I’m excited for tonight and for next week. I need to stay healthy and get the right times. We still have some big races. I’m excited about the distance medley, 800 and 1500.”
Other events that qualified for Mid-Prairie included the distance medley team of Hostetler, Amber Swart, Cassidy Rourke and Abbagail Evans with a championship time of 4:16.37. The Mid-Prairie 4×100 team of Amber Swart, Mitzi Evans, Maddie Edgington and Abbagail Evans was a winner in 50.70 seconds. Mid-Prairie won gold in the sprint medley with a time of 1:51.52 and the team of Maddie Edgington, Cassidy Rourke, Mitzi Evans and Amber Swart. The Golden Hawk 4×800 team also got through as a runner-up in 10:14.46 with a team of Angelina Evans, Abbagail Evans, Moriah Brase, and Kate Cavanagh.
The Golden Hawk boys finished seventh of 12 teams with 65 points. Williamsburg took the team title with 123.50 points. Mid-Prairie automatically qualified three different events for state including the 4×200 team of Clarke Latcham, Quinn Schmidt, Grant Boyse and Elmir Ganibegovic as runners-up in 1:33.10. The Mid-Prairie 4×800 team was also a runner-up with Quinn Schmidt, Miles Burrows, Brad Tornow and Justin Schwartz finishing in 8:24.66. The Mid-Prairie boys sprint medley team is also in with a second place finish as Clarke Latcham, Quinn Schmidt, Grant Boyse and Elmir Ganibegovic got the stick around the oval in 1:36.40.
A complete list of state qualifiers including automatic and performance qualifiers will be made available by the Iowa High School Athletic Association and Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union this weekend.