Busy track schedule this past week, teams prepare for conference meet

Ogden boys track started its week Monday at Gilbert, traveled to Woodward-Granger Tuesday (complete results were not available as of presstime) ,then finished at Roland-Story Thursday night.

According to Coach Ryan Kobliska the team has continued to improve since the start of the season and each week is seeing new personal best performances. “Over the course of this past week (Monday, Tuesday and Thursday) we improved each of our season bests in all seven relays, including school records in two events.”

Ethan Snedden, Cole Gunderson, Lucas Elsner and Blake Gregory ran a time of 1:41.46 in the 800 medley at Woodward-Granger and set the first of two school records. Another foursome, Ben Heeren, Louis Higgins, Stephen Flynn and Griffin Diggs, broke the shuttle hurdle relay record, clocking 1:08.66 at Roland-Story.

“It’s been great to have nice weather recently, allowing us to complete our scheduled meets and make big improvements in our sprint times,” says Kobliska.

With the seniors returning from the senior trip last weekend, Ogden could be more flexible in the lineups. “We were able to put together a very strong group on Tuesday where we took second place overall on the strength of some depth in the running events, outscoring all teams in these events.”

Garrett Buxton has been a consistently strong performer for the Bulldogs and won both the 1600 and 3200 meter runs at the Woodward-Granger meet. Kobliska feels he has a good chance of qualifying for state in  the 3200. 

As for the relays, the Bulldog coach says his best group recently has been the 800 medley (100-100-200-400). “We’ve been competitive with some very strong teams and if we can improve the quality of our hand-offs, we’ll have a chance to run at state. Our 1600 medley (200-200-400-800) has consistently placed first or second, but I expect we still need to improve quite a bit to qualify there.”

The Bulldogs are hosting the West Central Activities Conference meet Tuesday at Ogden. Their final regular season event will be a co-ed meet Friday at Ogden. 

For complete results, see the May 2 issue of The Ogden Reporter.