Highland’s Juliette Laracuente owned the MOAC track championships by earning four gold medals, setting one meet record and tying another, May 9-11 on the Marion Harding track. The Lady Scots were fourth in the women’s division with 81 points (40 earned by Laracuente). Shelby High School won the women's division, earning 150 points. Highland’s boys finished fifth with 78.50. Shelby won the men's competition with 133.50 and Ontario was second with 91.
Quadruple gold medalist Laracuente won her first MOAC championship of the meet in the 200-meter dash, in 25.18 seconds, by a margin of 0.89 seconds. The run broke the meet record set in 2018 by North Union’s Abby Davis, in 25.24. Laracuente also won the 100-meter hurdles championship with a run of 14.27 to win by 2.12 seconds. In her preliminary heat, Laracuente set a meet record of 14.12. Turning to field events, Laracuente won the high jump at 5’3” to win by 5 inches, and she won the long jump championship at 18’2.25” to win by 1’8.25”. As a side note, Laracuente already held the meet high jump mark at 5’7” set in 2022, and the meet long jump mark of 18’9” set in 2022.
Other top Highland women's finishes included Margaret Hennell, third in the discus throw; Gracyn Zerby, fourth in the pole vault; Alexis Eusay placed fourth in the shot put and Isabelle Arnette-Tomasek was fourth in the 400.
For the Highland boys, Toby Rogers placed second in the 300-meter hurdles and was fourth in the 110-meter hurdles. Gavin Hankins finished third in the 400-meter dash and the Highland 4x200 and 4x400-meter relay teams won silver. In field events, Gavin DeBord was second in the high jump, and Kieran Taylor and Darren Styer finished 2-3 in the pole vault.
Rutter sweeps OCC hurdles championships, Craigo and relay team also win gold
Marissa Rutter won both hurdles events for the second week in a row and Jack Craigo won his second hurdle run in two weeks as the Mount Vernon Yellow Jackets track team competed at the 2023 Ohio Cardinal Conference Championship meet at Ashland University’s Ferguson Field on May 12. The Jackets girls finished second and the boys finished sixth in their division.
On the girls side, the Lady Jackets finished in second place for the second consecutive year, accumulating 129 points, just 20 points behind winning Lexington and 31 points ahead of third-place Wooster.
Rutter swept the hurdle events, winning OCC championships in the 100-meter hurdles in 15.82 and the 300-meter hurdles in 47.81. She also captured both events at last week’s Jackets Invitational. Other Yellow Jacket gold medalist OCC champions included the 4x100 relay team of Sarah Phillips, Rutter, Sydney Statler and Amaris Middleton in school-record time of 49.83, to complete a gold-medal hat trick for Rutter. Brooklyn Thayer also took home an OCC championship, winning the discus with a throw of 121’8”.
Other top Jackets finishers included Middleton third and Phillips fourth in the 100-meter dash; Phillips finished third in the 200-meter dash; the 200-meter relay team of Makayla Pugh, Zoey Morrison, Statler and Middleton finished second; the 4x400 relay team of Statler, Alex Crouch, Rutter and Phillips finished second; Lucy Rush was second in the 3200 and Statler was fourth in the 400. In field events, Makena Laslo was second in the pole vault and Nevaeh Williams was fourth in the shot put.
The Mount Vernon boys finished sixth with 82 points as the second-through-sixth-place teams were separated by only 11 points. Ashland won with 138, New Philadelphia was second with 93 and the Jackets were only eight points out of third, captured by Mansfield Senior.
Craigo, who took gold in last week’s Jackets Invitational, won the OCC 110-meter hurdles championship in 15.55; and the Mount Vernon boys 4x200 relay team of Mason Richards, Ayden Kennedy, Cole Wilson and Ethan Young won the OCC championship in a school-record time of 1:30.88.
Matt Saluki was second in the 800-meter run; Young tied for second in the 400-meter dash; the MV relay team of Wilson, Logan Eggert, Saluki and Young placed third in the 4x400; Richards was fourth in the 200; Hunter Looney finished fourth in the 300-meter hurdles. In field events, Luke Mullins was second in the discus.
