Tigers prepare for spring track and field season

ST. REGIS – Despite having a small team, the St. Regis Track and Field team is fired up for the spring season with high hopes of repeating their state championship performances from last year.

The team has seven members. According to Head Coach Maury Johnston, this is a fairly typical size team for St. Regis. He said the team last year was smaller than this season.

The team has only one senior this year with a focus on the javelin. Arianna Jones took second place in the event at the Montana High School Track and Field State Meet last year. Johnston said another returning athlete, junior Gabby Moeller, took the state championship for high jump last year.

“We should look for them to both be right there at the end this year,” Johnston said. “They both can jump in the high jump and throw in the javelin as far as anyone in Class C in the state.”

The rest of the team is less experienced. Johnston said he would have to work more with each of them to figure out which events they excelled at. He knew some of the kids were good based on their experience with junior high track and field and hoped they carried the skills over to varsity.

The team almost had a third athlete with lots of experience in athletics. Freshman Madison Hill was expected to join the team this year, but tore her ACL during basketball and needed surgery. According to Johnston, she will be out of sports until at least the next basketball season.

The coach felt the high jump would be a good competition for the St. Regis team. He said the Tigers took the state championship in high jump three times in the last four years.

“We’ve had some tradition with the high jump,” Johnston said. “We always seem to refill with high jumpers, I don’t know why.”

With such an inexperienced team, Johnston does not expect most of the kids to be ready for the first meet. As it is, he does not focus on the next meet but aims to improve for the district, divisional and state competitions.

He does have high hopes for Jones and Moeller because of their past success. The fact they are already in shape from basketball season also helps their ability to compete.

Johnston said the team would not be competing for any of the team titles. He said their numbers are too small and it would be better for them to focus on individual competitions.

Charlo is expected to be the best school in the district. Johnston said Charlo usually had lots of kids participate and it gave them a big advantage. He felt St. Regis was the best team in the javelin throw and high jumps, but was not sure how the team would do in other competitions.

Next year is expected to be different in terms of the varsity team’s size. With approximately 18 kids on the junior high team, Johnston hopes a number of them decide to come back to compete in high school.

“Probably 12 or 14 of them will go out for track,” he said. “So we should have a lot more kids next year.”

The first meet St. Regis will compete in will be Saturday, March 29, in Ronan.