Dickinson High gets nice suprises at state meet
BISMARCK — Pleasant surprises were all around on a not-so-perfect day. The Dickinson High boys track and field team was happy to finish out the final day of the Class A state track and field meet on Saturday at the Bismarck Community Bowl with some strong finishes.By: Royal McGregor, The Dickinson Press
- Dallas Zastoupil and Austin Mack
- Mason Frank
- Madison Deibert
- Levi Jordheim
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BISMARCK — Pleasant surprises were all around on a not-so-perfect day.
The Dickinson High boys track and field team was happy to finish out the final day of the Class A state track and field meet on Saturday at the Bismarck Community Bowl with some strong finishes.
“Those were a couple good surprises from the young guys,” Dickinson senior Michael Porter said. “That’s just kind of things we need to sneak in the top five.”
Though the Midgets didn’t place in the top five, they logged plenty of state placers along the way.
Senior Brett Braunagel ran the fastest qualifying time in the 100-meter preliminaries at 11.25 seconds Friday. But one misstep in the finals dropped him to fourth (11.12) as West Fargo’s DeSean Thompson won the event at 10.98 seconds.
“I just had one stutter-step and that ended up being what brought it down,” Braunagel said. “I was in the lead for most of the time, but that one step gave it away. He’s fast and took advantage of it.”
It marked the first and only race between the competitors as different paths kept them from competing against each other in the past. But, they were brought together for an anticipated 100 finals.
“It’s definitely weird,” Braunagel said. “I was in baseball and he hurt his ACL last year. It was our first ever race against each other in that 100.”
Braunagel also placed eighth in the 200 (22.91) and helped his team place fifth in the 400 relay (44.25) and sixth in the 800 relay (1:31.75).
The senior said despite the poor weather conditions, the day was great.
“I wish I would have gotten a little higher in the 100,” Braunagel said. “There’s nothing really you can do about it. I didn’t really have the race I wanted. Everything else went right. We didn’t have any bad handoffs.”
As for the poor weather conditions, Porter and the rest of Dickinson’s distance runners knew warming up would be a must.
“We just had to come in with a positive mindset,” he said. “We knew that some guys might get down with the weather and we just had to have that mental toughness to get through it.
“We had to have a lot of warm-up time. We came down probably half an hour earlier than we normally would have.”
The relay team of Porter, Austin Mack, Joseph Sickler and Dallas Zastoupil took second in the 3,200 relay on Friday and added another runner-up finish in the 1,600. Porter also took fifth in the 800 (1:58.61).
“Today was a pleasant surprise being that all four of us were coming off that 800,” Porter said. “We just expected to get where we were placed. It just shows that at the state meet, we can have those performances.”
The Midgets added a sophomore to the mix in the field events.
Levi Jordheim set a personal-best mark in the high jump at 6 feet, 3 inches on his way to a fourth place finish.
“I was just thinking that the bar is at 5-8 the whole time. Just ease into it and get over the bar,” Jordheim said. “I want to come back (next year) and do better than ever.”
On the girls side, the Midgets failed to score points during the first day, but the rainy weather proved to be a good luck charm.
Madison Deibert finished in a three-way tie for seventh place in the high jump (4-11) while the 1,600 relay team took eighth (4:13.39). The rain didn’t stop Morgan Grosulak and Leslie Beaudoin from enjoying the final track event of their high school careers.
“I just ran as hard as I could, because you are never going to run again on this track with these girls,” Beaudoin said. “I just went as hard as I could.”
Getting to be on the podium for the final time isn’t too shabby either said Grosulak.
“We were happy with it,” she said. “There are a lot of good runners in the state and for us to compete with them makes us happy too. We have to look at our numbers versus their numbers. For us to get on podium was really great.”
Tags: track and field, dickinson midgets, sports, midgets, preps
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