THE OFFICIAL SITE OF
Bentonville High School Athletics

VAN BUREN -- The first event had been completed in the 6A-West Conference track and field championships, and Randy Ramaker already had a reason to smile Friday afternoon. His Bentonville High girls already had a substantial lead, having pulled off a 1-2-3-5 finish in the discus to compile 28 points. The Lady Tigers continued to build momentum from that performance and captured the team title at the Van Buren Track Complex. Molly Odell led Bentonville's charge in the discus with her winning throw of 115 feet, 3 inches, followed by Kelsey Ross at 107-2, Julianna Evanoff at 105-11 and Shonyea Lind at 104-1. "You can't set your day up better than the first event out of the blocks and do that well," Ramaker said. "And those girls have been throwing all year, so it wasn't an impossibility for that to happen. But you still have to do it, and only one of them had prequalified. There were nerves, but they came out and threw well today." Discus wasn't the only event where the Lady Tigers piled up points as Bentonville picked up 23 points in the 3,200-meter run, with senior Tori Willis leading a 1-2-4 finish with her winning time of 11 minutes, 25.60 seconds. Fellow senior Lainey Quandt led a 1-3-4-8 finish in the 1,600 with her time of 4 minutes, 59.80 seconds as Bentonville picked up 22 points, then she and teammate Emily Robinson finished one-two in the 800. That helped Bentonville finish the meet with 215.5 points. Rogers High was a distant second with 137.5, followed by Fayetteville with 119.5. "I give those distance kids all the credit in the world," Ramaker said. "A lot of things worked out well and went to script, so I was pleased with that. Lainey, Emily and Tori -- their races have been stellar all year long. We did enough in the jumps to qualify everybody we needed there, and the 300 hurdles, same thing." On the boys' side, Fayetteville was able to win the team title despite holding some athletes out of certain events, such as freshman standout Isaiah Sategna in the 110 hurdles and senior distance runner Camren Fischer out of all three distance races. The Bulldogs compiled 170.5 points, followed by Bentonville with 147.2 and Rogers with 121.2. Other Bulldogs came through with first-place finishes. Those people included Ryan Roark in the pole vault (16-0), the 4x800 relay team of Wayne Narcisso, Zane Thompson, Sam Fischer and Camren Fischer (8:08.13), Drake Stanton in the 100 (10.94), and the 4x100 team of Connor Flannigan, Stanton, Bryan Marks and Link Lindsey (42.58). "It's all about the team, and we've been preaching that since last year at Bryant," Yoakum said. "We're trying to build up a team here, and I think that's what we showed here. We have a lot of people and a lot of parts, and hopefully it's enough to win a state championship. It's still going to be a hard week next week." Sategna not only sat out the 100 hurdles, but also the 4x400 relay despite his pleas to Yoakum to run. The freshman, however, performed well in the events he did compete in, including a meet record in the long jump as he leaped 23-11 and broke the previous mark of 23-10 set by Robert Wright of Conway in 1981. "On my first jump, I didn't feel that good of a pop," said Sategna, who also won the 300 hurdles (38.69) and the 200 (22.07). "I didn't feel that good, but when I hit 23-11 I was so happy to be jumping good again. At Fayetteville, I only jumped 22 feet, so that's a big improvement. That's close to my lifetime-best of 24-1, but that was indoors."

THE OFFICIAL SITE OF
Bentonville High School Athletics

BENTONVILLE GIRLS, FAYETTEVILLE BOYS TAKE 6A-WEST TITLES

HENRY APPLE

Arkansas Online | 4/27/2019

PHOTO CREDIT: Andy Shupe