Area Girls Set For Class 1A, 2A State Track Meets

Area girls are set to head to Eastern Illinois University's O'Brien Stadium Thursday, Friday and Saturday in Charleston for the Class 1A and Class 2A State Track Meets.

There's only one lone participate in the Class 2A meet, Effingham High Schol's Shayna Phillips. Phillips will compete in the 800 preliminaries at approximately 10:29 a.m. Friday. If she advances, she will compete Saturday as the Class 1A, 2A and 3A finals are all scheduled.

There are numerous athletes in the Class 1A State Meet. Preliminaries will be held Thursday.

Track lovers will be watching Effingham St. Anthony's Anna Sophia Keller who will be competing in two events this year, the 1600 and the 3200. Keller is the defending state champion in the 1600. She will have a challenge from Dwight's Daly Galloway who comes into the meeting with a time of 5:04.81. Keller's time in the sectional was 5:05.29.

Keller also will compete in the 3200 where she has the best time coming into the event at 10:41.79. The next best was 11:08.97.

The next spot folks will be focusing on is the pole vault pit where four area tracksters will be competing. St. Anthony's Kristin Slaughter has turned in the second best vault at 11 feet while Teutopolis' Rachel Westendorf is tied at fifth best at 10-6 and Hannah Bueker is seventh at 10-0. Rachel Hanna of Altamont is tied for eighth best at 9-6.

Newton's McKendra Barthelme will be competing in the 100 high hurdles where she has the second best time at 15.51 seconds. Barthelme also will take part in the 300 low hurdles along with T-town's Westendorf.

Barthelme also will compete in the field events at the long jump where she has the fifth best leap of 17 feet, 1 1/2 inches and in the triple jump. Neoga's Olivia Ott and T-town's Westendorf also will be competing in the long jump

Other field event qualifiers were Anna Hartke of T-town in the high jump, Grace Hartrich of Newton in the discus and Ott in the triple jump.

Other area runners will be Newton's Alex Haarman in the 100, Hannah Litzelman in the 200, Emma Weber in the 400 and Lexie Davidson in the 800. Leah Goldstein of Altamont will be taking part in the 200.

All four relay events will have area qualifiers competing. In the 400 relay, St. Anthony's squad of Aly Esker, Emily McDevitt, Slaughter and Sara Ragland will compete along with a team from Newton.

In the 800, Newton's Barthelme, Brooke Koebele, Haarman and Taylor Johnson will compete along with a team from Teutopolis that includes Schmidt, Greuel, M. Weichman and Westendorf.

The 1600 relay will have Newton's Alli Kline, Weber, Johnson and Litzeman along with a T-town squad of K. Weichman, Hartke, Schmidt and M. Weichman.

The 3200 relay will have the Teutopolis squad of Emma Repking, Shanna Niebrugge, Kara Weichman and Megan Weichman along with a Newton four-some.

Qualifiers from Thursday's preliminaries will advance to finals scheduled for Saturday. Field events Thursday begin at 10 a.m. with the running events to start at 11 a.m.