Colfax athletes finish off season at state meet

With several individuals and two relay teams from Colfax competing at the WIAA State Track and Field meet June 5-6 at UW-LaCrosse, the poor weather probably didn’t allow most of them to show their best stuff. After a long delay due to lightning and rain  on Friday, more rain on Saturday forced officials to move the normal 10:30 start time for the day’s events to 4:30, making for a long afternoon and evening for all involved.

However, Heidi Lieffort persevered and placed second in the pole vault after moving the event indoors, then moved back outside for the discus throw. Lieffort broke her own school record of 10-00 in the pole vault which was the same height as the winner from Spencer, but because of more misses when they moved up to 10-03 she ended up as the runner up.  Lieffort was warming up for the discus when they called her over to receive her pole vault medal, and rather than let her check out to do so, the official made her do her throws right away. After throwing over 125 feet earlier in the season, Lieffort fouled on two of her throws and finished 16th at 91-03.

“Heidi was absolutely great in the pole vault with her personal best to break her own school record,” coach Ryan Krall said. “But the discus just didn’t work out. If she had thrown when she was supposed to, things would have been a lot different. An average throw for her would have put her in second place but she had to hurry and it threw everything off.”

The girls’ 4 X 800 relay team also brought some hardware home by finishing fifth in a time of 10:04.78. Dannielle Dachel, Courtney Dressel, Abbagail Schotter and Dempsey Fogarty are all underclassmen and with the top six earning medals, they had their chance to stand on the podium. Fogarty also competed in the 400 and 800m races and placed eighth in the 400, nearly breaking the school record at 1:00.39 and was also ninth in the 800 at 2:26.38. The team finished with 13 points in the meet.

“We expected our relay to finish with a medal,” Krall said. “They have been running stronger as the season went on and they peaked at the right time. And Dempsey ran some great races with good times in the meet. Our young kids are just a nice group to work with and they always tried their hardest in every meet no matter what the weather conditions were like.”

For the boys, senior Noah Pretasky ran a 12.04 in the preliminaries of the 100m dash and did not qualify for the finals. He appeared to have injured himself and did not run in the 4 X 100 relay after anchoring the team most of the season. Tucker Teige took his spot and along with Aliymu Davis, Brad Foyt and Andrew Adix, the group did not move on to the finals with their time of 46.08. All four are underclassmen.

Junior Ben Kragness placed 12th in the shot put at 46-01.75 and struggled in the discus throw, fouling on two of his three attempts with his only clean throw going 131-10.

“It was a tough two days for Noah,” coach Jamie Buchholz said. “He was hoping for good things this season but had to deal with some injuries. Tucker filled in for him and did a nice job as the lead off man in out relay. Ben faced some really tough competition and didn’t throw his best at this meet. I think the weather took its toll mentally on everyone but hopefully our young kids now know what they need to do to get back next year,” he added.