Plains girls return home as state champions

The girls of the Plains High School track and field team were oblivious to the reception waiting for them Saturday night after the Class B State Meet in Bozeman. They were sleeping on the bus when it pulled into town late in the evening.

You can hardly blame them for being tired. They made history at the state meet, winning the first ever championship in school history. The Trotters racked up 71 points to defeat the second place finisher Florence-Carlton with a score of 42.

When the bus carrying the exhausted champs rolled back into town, it was greeted with a finish line strung across Highway 200. The bus, like many of the athletes on it, was the first across.

A true team effort, the ladies from Plains were led by strong performances from the 1600-meter relay team, athletes competing in throwing events and Hailey Phillips who won three of her races.

The 1600-meter relay team of Phillips, Demi Horton, Shannon Dimond, and Nicole Rehbein demonstrated that objects in motion tend to stay in motion until they decide to put the brakes on. They beat the second place finishers by more than a second which in track and field sprinting events is an eternity.

In throwing events, athletes toss dangerous objects as far as they can. Kayla Holmes and Leah Thompson showed why you do not mess with girls wielding heavy things and a penchant for heaving them a great distance. Thompson and Holmes finished fourth and sixth respectively.

Carley VonHeeder was clearly born in the wrong century. She would have earned a spot fighting with the Spartan men had they seen how far she threw the javelin. She won the event on her first heave with a distance of 126 feet four inches.

Even if one were paying attention, you might have needed a high-speed camera to see Rehbein in the 100-meter race. She finished third in the event with a time of 13.14 seconds.

And then there is Phillips. Phillps racked up 42.5 of the 71 points scored by the Trotters. She came in second in the 100-meter hurdles. Maybe she was tired from winning the 400-meter, the 200-meter and the 300-meter hurdles.

“It’s really a great feeling,” said coach Denise Montgomery. “It’s all about these girls and this team. We have such a great group of kids here.”

Montgomery said the whole experience of going to state for both the girls and the boys teams was a valuable learning exercise.

“It gives them the confidence to know that their performance can stand up to anyone in the state,” said Montgomery.

The championship for the girls track team is the first in the school’s history. For Montgomery, it’s her first as a coach. For throwing coach James Jermyn, it’s his second with the team, his first was as an athlete years ago. For the girls of the Plains track and field team, it may be the first but probably not the last.