RANDY HISNER
WZBD.com
NEW HAVEN – Heritage throwers Logan Teichman and Charlie Riddle combined for 26 points Thursday in the New Haven Track and Field Sectional to lead the Patriots to fourth place, the top team finish among Z-Land squads.
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The ninth-ranked Homestead Spartans won the meet with 184 points to the 108 of runner-up New Haven. Huntington North was third with 90, Heritage fourth with 67.
South Adams was sixth with 48, Bellmont eighth with 19, Adams Central ninth with 17.
Teichman was the surprise winner in the shot put, nipping teammate and top seed Charlie Riddle. Neither threw a personal best, but the 52-1.75 of Teichman and the 51-1 of Riddle were enough to beat everyone else in the field.
“It was nice to come out on top for once,” Teichman said. “Come out and win it, senior year, never got close to the podium before, so it feels great.”
He likes throwing every day with his friend Riddle. “It’s great competition,” he said. “He usually throws a little bit better than I do, but, you know, it gives me something to chase, just for a chance like this.”
Riddle bested his teammate in the discus, placing third with a throw of 139-8; Teichman took seventh with 128-1.
The Patriots claimed the only other Z-Land individual champion with Marshall Harris’s dominant performance in the 400 meters. He beat runner-up Tyler Hess of Homestead by over two seconds with his 49.95. It was his first sub-50. “Finally getting there, pushing through it—you’re in the big leagues now,” he said.
Braden Walter did not initially qualify for regional in the long jump, but did receive a callback Friday morning and he will also represent the Patriots.
Setting a new PR is Harris’s constant focus. “That’s always the goal,” he said. “Winning is the thing that comes second. I’m more focused on getting my PR, pushing past my limits. I know I’m not always going to win, but I can always beat myself.”
Junior half-miler Harry Gunsett gave the Bellmont faithful their biggest thrill of the night when he blew past his #5 seed to place second with a huge PR of 2:00.62. It was over four seconds faster than his previous best, an almost unheard of amount of time for an already accomplished runner to cut in the 800.
The performance was even better than Gunsett’s goal for the race. “I was shooting for at least a 2:02, hopefully third,” Gunsett said. (The top three finishers advance to the regional.) But when he saw the opportunity to move into second on the backstretch, he took it. It helped that his good friend and fellow competitor Brian Garcia of New Haven, who finished third, encouraged him. “When we were in the last 200,” Gunsett said, “he screamed, ‘Go, Harry, go!’ That pushed me. Then when I was in second, I just tried everything to keep it that way.”
Garcia, a sophomore, had qualified earlier in the 1600-meter run, taking second in 4:26.70, just a couple ticks away from the New Haven school record.
Another Z-Land runner-up finish came from junior Uriel Gutierrez of South Adams in the discus. Sitting in fifth place with one throw left, he produced a big-time clutch throw of 139-11 to slip past Riddle by three inches. As throwers go, Gutierrez is not very big. How does he do it? “Technique is his thing,” explained South Adams coach Clint Anderson. “He’s a student of the sport. You can tell when he’s in the ring practicing, this kid knows what he’s doing.”
The Starfires will also send two relays to the regional. Their 4X800 relay team (Wyatt Mann, Dakota Sprunger, Easton O’Dell, Caiden Neuenschwander) placed third in 8:30.83. Their 4X400 relay (Jackson Garcia, Tytus Lehman, Zach Schwartz, Caiden Neuenschwander) also placed third, in a time of 3:37.04.
Anderson said that because of another runner’s scratch from the 800, Neuenschwander will go to the regional in that event as well. He finished fourth in in 2:00.97.
Adams Central’s Ethan Crockett will advance to the regional by virtue of his third-place finish in the 3200-meter run in 10:27.26.
This was the third straight year that Heritage has led Z-Land teams in the sectional standings. Heritage head coach Casey Kolkman thinks one factor in the Patriots’ success is the coaching staff’s emphasis on encouraging athletes to play multiple sports. “Two or three of us that coach football coach track now,” he said. “We tell the boys, ‘If you’re not going to play baseball, run track. Go compete. Go put your foot on the line. This training with all these specialized people—come on, you’re in high school. There’s plenty of time for that (focusing on only one sport) in college.”
Other placers for Z-Land teams:
Bellmont—Maddux Miller, seventh in the 1600-meter run in 4:53.19; 4X400 relay (Gunsett, Miller, Will Kintz, Evan Sovine), fifth in 3:44.08; 4X800 relay (Gavin Braun, Owen Adams, Cayden Rauch, Landon Rich), eighth in 9:44.08; 4X100 relay (Jackson Hicks, Will Kintz, Evan Sovine, Xavier Palacios), eighth in 47.12; Hicks, seventh in the long jump with 18-7; Hayden Whittenbarger, eighth in the 3200-meer run in 10:55.86.
Adams Central—Logan Clark, sixth in the 800-meter run in 2:07.00; 4X800 (Ethan Crockett, Logan Clark, Tyler Schwartz, Carter Steele), fourth in 8:37.72; Trevor Schwartz, seventh in the 3200-meer run in 10:43.79; Thomas Laughlin, eighth in the long jump with 18-5.
Heritage—Braden Walter, fourth in the 100 in 11.47; Harris, sixth in the 200 in 23.81; Jaxon Hoting, sixth in the 1600-meter run in 4:50.51; 4X100 relay (Landon Hickes, Ian Hale, Greyson Mullins, Brandon Walter), sixth in 45.66; 4X400 relay (Geremew Gerber, Greyson Mullins, Cooper Naatz, Eli Tigulis), sixth in 3:45.09; 4X800 relay (Aaron Baumier, Gabriel Hanford, Corbin Roth, Hayden Amstein), sixth in 8:53.43; Davian Bates, sixth in the high jump at 5-8; Dominic Ferguson, sixth in the pole vault at 9-6; Walter, fourth in the long jump at 20-2.5.
South Adams—William Patterson, seventh in the 200 in 24.34; Zach Schwartz, sixth in the 400 in 55.20; Wyatt Mann, seventh in the 400 in 56.01; Mark McKinley, eighth in the 1600-meter run in 5:00.18; Dakota Sprunger, fifth in the 3200-meter run 10:41.58; Deacon Bierbaum, sixth in the 3200-meter run in 10:42.90; Tytus Lehman, seventh in the 110-meter hurdles in 17:48, and sixth in the 300 hurdles in 43.55; 4X100 relay (Jackson Garcia, Uriel Gutierrez, Blake Hoffman, William Patterson), seventh in 46.99; Grant O’Dell, eighth in the discus in 119-10.
Note: For full results and a further look at individual bests and PRs, view our article here.
The regional is scheduled for 6:00 P.M. on Thursday, May 23, at Carroll High School.
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