Still ridin’ high: Lex boys win district track title as encore to OCC crown
LEXINGTON — In the end, the Lexington boys track team found the perfect way to make 10 hours on a school bus more tolerable.
They parlayed those two five-hour round trips Wednesday and Friday into a team championship at the Division I district track and field meet at Oregon Clay High School.
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The Minutemen rode bookend titles in the 4x800 and 4x400 relays to 83.50 points, good enough to stave off Sylvania Southview (78), Perrysburg (72) and Toledo St. Francis (71.5).
Winning the 4x8 in a meet record 7:52.03 to kick things off on Wednesday was a great omen of things to come. The crew of senior Ethan Slone, juniors Will Perkins and Chance Basilone and sophomore Latrell Hughes shattered the old mark of 7:54.5 set by Toledo Scott in 1985.
Lex capped its title performance on Friday by winning the 4x4 in 3:20.73. If the team of Hughes, Perkins, senior Carter Newman and junior Bryson Hess had been a little fresher, they might have broken the meet record of 3:17.6, held since 1981 by the team of George Swarn, Terry Simmons, Tim Pender and Issac Porter from now-defunct Mansfield Malabar.
Talk about a flash from the past.
“They’re up there (in the press box) announcing, ‘Mansfield Malabar record,’ and it was kind of cool,” Lex coach Mike Moore said. “(Assistant coach) Grant Weaver (former head coach at Mansfield Senior) was standing next to me and said, ‘Hey, Mansfield Malabar!’ You don’t hear people say that anymore.
“Being that we were the only local school at the meet, it was cool to hear that a local school had one of the records.”
Two of them now.
“Our 4x8 broke a 39-year-old record, but to be honest, we can run it faster,” Moore said. “It’s hard. We had hard workouts this (past) week.”
In between the two relays, Lex had several other qualifiers for the Wednesday and Friday regional at Port Clinton.
Hughes and Perkins took second and third, respectively, in the 400, junior Joe Hathaway — a key member of Lex’s powerhouse swim team — was runner-up in the discus, Hughes’ twin brother Dantrell was third in the 300 hurdles, Newman was fourth in the 200 and junior Chance Basilone was third in the 3,200. His time of 9:23.28 was second-best in school history and he was one of three runners to break the long-standing meet mark, but the record officially belongs now to district champ Connor Long of Anthony Wayne (9:16.52).
Perkins, Newman and Latrell Hughes are back from the 4x4 that finished third in last year’s DI state meet with a school record 3:16.9. This year’s group, with Slone as the new addition, is ahead of last year’s pace.
“(Districts) was a fun meet,” Moore said. “The boys ran well. It’s a long bus ride, but it’s a lot of time with the guys and there’s a lot of bonding. And it pays off. It made for a fun ride home.”
His message to his team this coming week?
“We’re going to get the kids fresh and put a team out there that can run fast,” Moore said. “That goes for all events. We’re going to compete. We have a tough region and we just want to make it to Friday. We’ll worry about Friday on Friday.”
Ashland boys also win a district crown
One week ago, Lex beat Ashland in the Ohio Cardinal Conference meet to end the Arrows’ seven-year reign. Now they both head to Port Clinton as DI district champs.
Ashland scored 115 points to tie the host school for the boys title at Findlay The Arrows got wins from junior Jacob Holbrook in the 100 dash (11.05), the 4x2 relay (1:28.58) and 4x4 relay (3:21.27). Dakota Kruty was runner-up in the long jump and hurdlers Braydon Martin and Jayden Goings finished two-three in the 110 highs and 300s, with Martin runner-up in the highs and Goings finishing ahead of his sidekick in the longer race.
Ashland also had a champ on the girls side in junior Vivian Walter. She won the 100 hurdles (15.36). Her younger sister Sadie was fourth in the 100 and teammates Dana Frazier and Aliviah Sauder were second and third, respectively, in the pole vault and 800.
Madison senior Nevaeh Lewis was a quadruple champ. She swept the 100 (12.06) and 200 (25.32) and anchored the victorious 4x1 relay (49.53) and 4x4 relay (4:04.17).
The Rams also got a second from Alisha Hill in the discus, thirds from Calie Cyrus in the long jump and 400 and a third from Paidge Butler in the 100 en route to a third place finish (73 points) in the team standings behind champion Findlay (111) and runner-up Fremont Ross (106.5).
This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Still ridin’ high: Lex boys win district track title as encore to OCC crown
