As winter wraps up and the warm spring air is arriving, the Kings indoor track team is ending their season on a positive note.

On Saturday March 5, Kings indoor track state qualifiers headed to Akron University to compete in their final races for the 2015-2016 indoor track season. The team has never had this many athletes qualify for state.

Kings High School junior Hannah Rasmussen competed in the 4 x 800 with athletes Leah Maschino, Karleigh Connor, and Jennifer Cooper. Their relay team finished with the time of 9:33.11 setting a new school record and stood on the podium for 5th place. 

Rasmussen said “We all felt very excited for having placed, it was a hard fought race and I think we all did our very best that day.”

Gwyn Gorley, Jennifer Cooper, Karleigh Conner, and Sarah Bruns were all the competitors for the 4×400 relay. The girls set a new school record time of 4:06.17 for 12th place

Freshman distance runner Gwyn Gorley said, “I feel like all the hard work paid off. Our team beat the school record by 4 seconds and I PR’d by 2 seconds. Everyone dropped time in everything.”

Gorley added, “This was my first indoor season and I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed it. People on the team were nice for the most part and sure, the meets were all day events but I feel like we all bonded through the fact the we were in this together.”

Many of the athletes completed the meet breaking and setting new school records.

Boy’s 4 x 800 – new school record time of 8:21.65 for 13th place, ran by Jack Chambers, Isaac Onnen, Josh Haverland, and Max Schowalter.

Sarah Bruns ran the 60 meter hurdles and set a new school record of 9.45 for 13th place.
Bruns also ran the 400 meter dash and set another new school record of 58.56 for 10th place.
Lily Bunse, pole vault new school record of 12′ 3″ and stood on the podium for 2nd place.

Rasmussen said, “We were pretty excited to have a competitive 4×800 race at state. For the 2 mile, I was nervous about running the race against a lot of fast runners but I felt like my hard work had paid off in being a state qualifier.”

Rasmussen added, “I prepared myself for the state meet pretty much the same I did for every meet, I try to work my hardest at every practice and eat healthy and get good sleep.”

For the athletes there are still some things they feel they wished they could have improved with for the state championship.

“I wish I had worked more on starting blocks. I feel like they slowed down my take off a little. I’m getting better at them, but we’re still way far apart being close friends,” Gorley said. “The whole experience of state was really rewarding.”

By Emilee Charneski