Field Of Plenty

   The field 2009 Kansas State Track And Field meet is once again chock-full with many of the state’s top athletes, and five Dodge High Red Demons were able to make their way into today’s final rounds in the Class 6A battle for Sunflower State supremacy.
    Two more have already made it to the medal stand in field events that concluded Friday.
    Senior speedster Courtney Brady qualified for the girls’ 400-meter dash finals with the fifth fastest time at the meet. She ran the 400 in 59.01 seconds, just a half second slower than she did a week ago to grab the regional crown in the same event.
    “We think she’s still got a chance to do what she’s set out to do all season,” said DCHS coach Justin Burke. “Because we’ve had those days where we look really good in prelims and don’t have any legs left for the finals, and I don’t think that’ll be the case here.”
    Fellow senior Toby Boese made the finals of the boys’ 300-meter hurdles by qualifying with the seventh fastest time at the meet and running a 40.94.
    Boese and the rest of the Red Demon boys 4x400-meter relay team qualified for today’s finals with the fourth fastest time at the state meet. Boese, Taggart Ketron, Trevor Otterstein and Joe Butcher are the sixth seed in today’s finals after coming across the finish line fourth in their heat with a time of 3:24.18.
    “That was a great four-by-four run,” Burke said. “Those guys did really good against what you might call the Kansas City blitz.”
    Burke was referring to the Kansas City area teams, which are traditionally formidable at the state meet.
    Junior Erin Sughroue got up to the podium Friday after she cleared five feet in the girls’ high jump. Though she had made jumps four inches higher during the season, she was still able to put Dodge City up on the scoreboard with a seventh place finish.
    And she did it with diminished warm-up time, because another of her events, the 4X100-meter relay preliminary heats, were being run at the same time as the high jump.
    “It was kind of hectic,” Sughroue said. “I didn’t know if I’d be ready for the high jump right after coming off the track.”
    She beat Garden City’s Chinwe Ekweariri, who was jumping under similar circumstances, by two spots. Ekweariri was the gold medal winner at the Demons’ 6A regional meet.
    Fellow junior Lauren Marshall placed seventh in the girls’ pole vault finals as well after getting over the bar at 9 feet, 6 inches. The vault was her highest at a meet this season, and it was good for one more point for the Red Demons as a team.
    Sophomore Sophie Shaull placed sixth in the girls’ triple jump finals as well. She scraped by Garden City’s Cathy Boos by just a quarter of an inch with a jump of 35-04.25.
    But state was a tougher day for some other Red Demons. Both Ole Weyland and Darious Martinez scratched on their three triple jump attempts, and were unable to put points on the board early in the day.
    “We were relly sluggish at the beginning of the day. It was like we weren’t loose enough,” Burke said. “But as the day wore on, we got a little better.”
    Sprinter DaShonda Johnson, who injured her right knee in the 100-meter hurdles at regionals, came up limping in the middle of her hurdle heat race Friday. The same knee was braced for the meet, and Johnson said even trying to run at state was a game-time decision.
    “I was missing my steps, so I was just hopping over the hurdles,” Johnson said. “But I had to at least give it a try.”
    The Red Demon girls 4x100 team ran ninth during preliminaries and missed qualifying for the finals by .25 seconds as well.
    Brady’s 400-meter dash final will be run today at Wichita State University’s Cessna Stadium at approximately 3:10 p.m. Boese will run the 300-meter hurdle finals shortly after at 4 p.m.
    The Red Demon boys 4x400-meter relay team will cap off the 2009 State Meet at 5:45 p.m.

Other Red Demon notables
Boys 4x100-meter relay – Ole Weyland, Trevor Otterstein, Joe Butcher, Shane Graves (12th – 44.22, did not qualify for finals)
Courtney Brady – 200-meter dash (16th, 27.09, did not qualify)
Taggart Ketron – 400-meter dash (16th, 54.01, did not qualify)
Emily Durler – shot put – (13th, 32-03.00, did not qualify)
Kierra Johnson – 200-meter dash (10th, 26.36, did not qualify)
Sophie Shaull – 400-meter dash (15th, 1:03.12, did not qualify)
Lauren Marshall – 100-meter hurdles (12th, 16.96, did not qualify)
Girls 4x400-meter relay – Erin Sughroue, Sophie Shaull, Ashton Moore, Courtney Brady (11th, 4:12.53, did not qualify)
Samantha Shirley – high jump (no height)
Shane Graves – 200-meter dash (12th, 23.02, did not qualify)