EUGENE — The Olympia Bears made a statement on one of the biggest stages in high school track and field.
Out of 82 schools that scored points at the Oregon Relays in Eugene this weekend, Olympia finished 15th with 40 team points. The Bears earned the top prize in two events — Friday’s boys 1,600-meter sprint medley relay and Saturday’s 4,000-meter distance medley relay — and took home a top-10 finish in a total of nine events.
Out of schools from Washington state, Olympia ranked fourth.
After a thrilling first day of action Friday that saw the Bears boys sprint medley team break the Oregon Relays meet record, Olympia continued its momentum on the track Saturday. The Bears 4,000-meter distance medley team of Caden Durocher, Sam Rigg, Wesley Stevick and Quenton Lanese took home the title in 10 minutes and 24.16 seconds. Durocher, who finished the sprint medley relay Friday night, kicked off the distance medley relay with a strong 1,200-meter time of 3:10.11.
Rigg, another repeat member of both winning medley teams, torched the Hayward Field track in a 49.64-second 400-meter run to keep Olympia in front. Stevick took the baton from Rigg for the 800-meter portion of the relay, fending off some fierce competition and pulling away in the final lap to finish his segment in 2 minutes and 7.38 seconds. Lanese, a former world record holder in the mile as a 12-year-old, capped off the relay with a 1,600-meter time of 4:17.03, his all-time best, to give Olympia the victory.
Lanese was frustrated with his 1-mile final run Friday night as he came in 15th. He made up for it in emphatic fashion, propelling the Bears to not only its second relay win of the Oregon Relays but a secured top-15 finish in the team scores.
“After yesterday, I was pretty motivated to just go as hard as I could and leave it all out there. So that’s what I did,” Lanese said. “I think we proved that we can hold our own against teams from around the country.”
Rigg said Olympia’s announcement to the rest of the Pacific Northwest, and perhaps the rest of the country, was that the Bears track and field program is not to be doubted.
“I think we proved that you don’t need money. You don’t need recruiting. You don’t need a large, popular history,” he said. “You just need people who believe in each other, that care, that are willing to put in the work, and aren’t going to give up when it doesn’t go their way the first time. I just love these guys because they want to see me succeed as much as they want to see themselves succeed, which is so selfless of them.”
Olympia boys head coach Jesse Stevick said he didn’t expect the amount of success his team put forth in the Oregon Relays but is confident that the best is still yet to come for his program.
“I think about who can score points at the state meet, and while it’s not something I want to focus on, there’s a lot of guys that can score points at state,” he said. “To see that they can do that against this national competition is pretty fun. It’s an awesome experience.”
The boys 4x200 relay team pulled off an impressive feat, finishing second in their heat and 32nd overall at 1:35.24 despite a rather chaotic pre-race that saw them take the track late due to some confusion.
“We got into the tunnel. We were panicking. We thought Heat 1 was still in there but they already went out,” Rylan Thomas said. “A person came by and told us to get our stuff and go, and I tried to explain to them that there was a heat mixup.”
After all, the Bears were indeed in the first heat, and the lack of mental preparation did them surprisingly well. Aden Carr, Shaun McKay, Clark Molenda and Thomas were close to the front throughout the majority of the race before Thomas finished less than a second after Shorewood.
“I think the adrenaline from all of that really helped us pull in second place,” Thomas joked.
The Olympia girls 4x800 relay team of Carolina Schilter, Lucy Clinton, Ava Barr and Sydney Kosa dazzled en route to a 10th-place overall finish and second in their heat at 9:48.63.
Kosa, the relay finisher, said the Olympia relay team has an “unbeatable” bond that has helped their chemistry on the track. She also credited the culture of the program as a whole for the success the Bears enjoyed this weekend.
“We hang out every single day. Once you have that bond and that connection, there’s no limit to what you can do,” Kosa said of the 4x800 relay team. “Everyone is awesome. We have different personalities. We’re just all genuine.”
The girls 4,000-meter distance medley relay team of Gemma Stevick, Anneliese Jones, Sofia Dunlap and Schilter took 17th overall at 13:02.97, adding to Olympia’s strong weekend in relays.
Senior thrower Carson Godfrey, who started the Oregon Relays Friday with a runner-up finish in shot put and a fifth-place mark in hammer, took fifth in discus at 168-10. After fouling two of his first three attempts, he unloaded the fifth-place throw to vault him up the rankings.
Fellow senior thrower Bennie Asomaning added a 10th-place discus finish to her resumé, throwing a season-best 115-3 on her fourth and final throw. She also fouled two of her first three tosses before bouncing back on the last try.
Junior Taylor Fabritius earned 28th in high jump at 5-foot-8, and senior Logan Gerrits took 29th in pole vault at 11 feet, 11.75 inches.
Timberline senior jumper Carmelo Roper, who took 15th in long jump at 20-9.75 Friday, earned 11th in the triple jump Saturday with a top leap of 42-10.75. Roper is only in his third year of track and field but has shown vast improvement in both the long jump and the triple jump since he began.
“There’s been hard days, and I feel like these past two years have had adversity. But I’ve been doing pretty well overall,” he said. “It’s been a mind game when I underperform. I usually tend to get down on myself and believe that I can’t do it. But it’s been a next-play mentality for me lately. These are some of the hardest events to do, and one of the greatest compliments you could get is being acknowledged for doing something that’s hard. I want to be known for doing something that not everybody can do.”
Timberline senior Brady Moe ran the 800-meter open Saturday morning, finishing in 56th at 2:10.06.
