A selection of the Clarkston girls track team got the season off on the right foot with an admirable showing at the State Indoor Meet at the University of Michigan on March 18.
As the track season is yet to begin, Clarkston ran under the Team Running Gear moniker.
‘I think everyone ran well,? said assistant track coach Jamie LaBrosse, who is focusing on the team’s distance runners this season as he did last year while John Yorke serves as head coach.
The best performance of the day came from seniors Beth Hoekstra, Lyndsay Smith and Lisa Sickman and freshman Stephanie Morgan who won the mile relay.
LaBrosse said Sickman was close to 90 percent healthy, after being forced to sit out the cross country championship in the fall with a leg injury.
Other stand outs for Clarkston included the distance medley relay team comprised of Smith, Hoekstra, Jenna Leach and Jordan Mozwske, who took sixth overall.
Individually, Morgan finished second in the 800. Leach took fourth place in the mile and sophomore Stephanie Thorstad finished fourth in the long jump.
Thorstad, who as a freshman qualified for states in the long jump, is part of a youth movement in the field events which LaBrosse hopes makes Clarkston’s team more dangerous this year.
‘We’ve never had anyone place in the state in field events,? LaBrosse said. ‘That adds another dimension to our team.?
LaBrosse hopes that competitors like Thorstad and 2005 state qualifiers like sophomore Taylor Rademacher (long jump) and sophomore Autumn Touchstone (100 hurdles) will help the team build on their fourth place finish at the state finals last year.
As in years past though, the girls track team will be anchored by the distance runners hot off their third straight cross country state championship this past fall.
Jenny Morgan, a senior, did not compete in the State Indoor Finals, but LaBrosse expects her to be healthy for the season. Morgan, Smith, Sickman and Liz Mengyan, who now runs at University of Illinois, set a state record in the 3200 relay at last year’s state finals in June. Morgan also set a state record as an individual in the 1600 last year and was also the state champion in the 3200.