Superior boys, Noxon girls lead local teams at Kim Haines Invite

With district, divisional and state track and field meets just around the corner, a good barometer for local Class B and C schools may have been this past weekend’s Kim Haines Invitational meet in Missoula.

Athletes from 19 western Montana B and C classification schools took part in the annual event, held at the Missoula County Public Stadium.

And if meet results from this year are any kind of trend indicator, athletes from at least three Sanders and Mineral county schools should fare well in the upcoming playoff events.

And Emily Brown of Noxon is a name to keep track of.

In Missoula, Loyola-Sacred Heart’s men scored 121.5 team points to easily outdistance second place Jefferson High (Boulder), which collected 87.5.

Not that far behind, in seventh place was Superior’s mens team with 23 points. And a surprising entrant on the team list was Alberton, in its first year of varsity sports, which was tied for seventeenth in the team race with two points.

In the women’s competition, Broadwater High (Townsend) won the team championship with 77 points, just two points ahead of runner-up Jefferson. And in a surprisingly strong showing, seventh place was occupied by Noxon, which accumulated 34 points, one point better than the Superior boys who had 33 team points.

The best showing among local men was in the pole vault, where state qualifier Lucas Kovalsky, a Superior junior, won the event with a personal best leap of 13-3. He was a full foot higher than second place Jake Jamieson of Sacred Heart. Superior also picked up a fifth place finish in the pole vault from senior Decker Milender, who cleared 11 feet.

Also in the top 10 in the vault was Superior eighth grader Gannon Quinlan, who cleared a personal best 10 feet to finish tied for eighth place. George Hanson, another Superior freshman, was tenth in the vault.

Superior also got a second place finish in the men’s triple jump event when sophomore Trizthen Avila hopped, skipped and jumped 38-05.50.

One of the biggest surprises of the men’s competition was the strong showing by Alberton freshman Shea Fredette, who was fifth in the triple jump, eighth at 800 meters and ninth in the 400 meter run.

Another local underclassman, Hot Springs sophomore David Chapman, was 11th in the 200 meter sprint, ninth in the 110 meter hurdles and seventh in the 300 meter hurdles. The Savage Heat also got eighth and ninth place finishes from Elijah and Wyatt Campbell in the 3200 meter event. Allan Ryan of Superior was seventh at 3200 meters.

Superior junior Jaxon Green also added to the Bobcats team total with his fifth place showing in the shot put and eleventh in the discus.

Clearly the star of the show for Sanders/Mineral County athletes was Noxon senior Emily Brown, who pretty much single-handedly helped the Lady Red Devils to their lofty seventh place team finish.

Brown won the women’s 200 meter sprint with a personal best time of 28 second flat. She also won the women’s 400 meter run, breaking the tape at 1:01.05, and captured the javelin with a throw of 113-07. She was also fourth in the women’s 100 meter spring with a PR time of 13.49.

Also having a strong showing was Alberton sophomore Georgia Fredette, who was seventh in the shot put and eleventh in the discus event.

And yet another freshman emerging as a future standout was Hot Springs’ freshman Kara Christensen, who placed twelfth in the discus and eleventh in the javelin.

Superior’s women also got points in the pole vault event where Payton Milender was fourth with a vault of 8-0, and Isabella Pereira was fifth at 7-6.

Area Class C schools head to Missoula this weekend for the Western District 14C championships.