Tanager qualifiers compete at state track, field meet

Tanager qualifiers compete at state track, field meet By Parker Knox
Sportswriter The high school sports year came to an end when Vermillion's qualifiers competed in the state track and field meet in Spearfish and Rapid City over the weekend. The Tanager boys team scored six team points when Wyatt Hunter placed third in the shot put.  His best throw was 49'6 1/4". Going in as the top seed, Beresford's Kyle McKelvey lived up to his ranking with a state championship throw of 55'1". Vermillion's other male qualifier, Mike Oberle, finished 20th in the preliminaries in the 300-meter hurdles in a clocking of :44.84. The VHS girls team, which has been strong in relays all spring, registered three total team points with a pair of state meet medal finishes. The 1600-meter team of Kayla Munger, Morgan Erickson, Sarah Day and Mariah Dodson ran the third-best time in the prelims, 4:16.25.  They ran even faster in the finals but nevertheless placed seventh with a run of 4:14.88. The problem was that St. Thomas More, which had a 4:14.18 time in the prelims, blew away the field by running eight seconds faster to win the finals in 4:06.20. The other VHS team that placed was the 400-meter team of Karissa Martin, Dodson, Christine Epping and Munger with an eighth-place time of :54.01. In the prelims they had the fifth-best time at :51.98. Madison won that event in :51.08. Vermillion's 800-meter quartet of Martin, Munger, Dodson and Day had the ninth-best time in the preliminaries at 1:50.36, only nine-tenths of a second out of the eighth and final qualifying spot. The VHS medley team of Martin, Epping, Day and Sophie Nehlich-Arobba was disqualified in its run.