Perry’s Myers wins three Heart of Iowa titles, soccer beats Van Meter
The last moments are approaching for many teams but this week showed some momentum that could carry Perry further into May. (Note: Events covered May 1-6)
Boys Track
The Bluejays took on the Heart of Iowa on May 2 hosted by South Hamilton and placed eighth in the eight team conference meet.
Digging in to find his best performance, Renzo Saenz clocked second place at 11.43 seconds in the 100-meter dash. That is above his 11.54 seconds he ran at last year’s state championship.
The team’s other state qualifier from 2023, Owen Myers took second place as well in the 400-meter hurdles with a time of 57.77 seconds. Like Saenz, that’s better than the 59.32 seconds he paced last year at the state meet. But over a second behind his PR, Myers still has room to move upward.
Perry will find out who makes the cut this year at the state qualifiers Thursday evening in North Polk.
Girls Track
Perry walked out of the May 2 tournament for the Heart of Iowa tagged as the sixth-best team this season, getting three championships in the process.
Freshman phenom Lily Myers put the team on her back with individual titles in two events and anchored another win in the distance medley.
Taking after Owen’s ability in the distance hurdles, Lily was crowned the 400-meter champ with a time of 1:13.32. Still three second from PR, this would have been 23rd overall at last year’s state meet. The same can be said of her winning time in the 3,000-meter run that would have placed 19th at state.
Clocked at 11:38.17, she was over 12 second ahead of the back. She has a PR of five seconds quicker this year. However, she helped Cate Erickson, Alexa Garcia and Taryn Nehring bring home gold in the distance relay with the crew shaving four seconds off their PR to 4:33.78.
Boys Soccer (9-4)
May rains tabled Saturday’s tournament in Nevada, but the Bluejays still found a resume-boosting win this week after downing Van Meter on Monday.
With the Bulldogs tagged No. 9 in Class 1A action, the 2A-No. 6 ranked Jays proved to have the ultimate edge after getting the advantage in overtime for a 3-2 win. Omar Jaimes had his first scores of the season, putting the Jays on the board twice while Jonatan Banuelos also kicked through one shot.
Perry is slated as the top seed in its substate region and will first play on May 20 in the semifinals against either Ballard (4-8) or Grinnell (4-9).
Girls Soccer (3-10)
Perry bounced around the old Raccoon River with two games this week, falling Friday in a shutout to Gilbert (10-1) and later a 6-2 loss to Boone (5-7) on Monday.
Girls Golf
After the regular season concludes on May 9, the Jayettes head to Nishna Hills for their regional round. Last year’s team finished eighth. But the team heads in with considerable momentum in comparison.
As a unit, the Jayettes hit an average of 444 on 18 holes. That has dropped to 419 this season with Addison Huntington, Zoey Vail and Kaylee Wuebker each hitting below 106. The team didn’t have any player under that threshold in 2023.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Perry’s Myers wins three Heart of Iowa titles, soccer beats Van Meter
