Trojan girls win meet

Boys second out of six

The Hillsboro High School girls track team finished first out of six Monday night in Hillsboro at the Central Kansas Track League meet at Joel Wiens Stadium.

Paced by eight first-place finishes, including three from record-setting freshman Jessica Saunders, the Trojans outdistanced runner-up Solomon, 152.5-93.

Since Friday, Saunders set a pair of school records previously held by Keli Chisholm and Dakota Kaufman.

On Friday afternoon at the James Thomas Invitational, Saunders’ second-place javelin throw of 122 feet beat Kaufman’s record set in 2009 by nearly six feet.

Three days later, Saunders’ meet-best throw of 38’ 5” beat Chisholm’s record of 36’ 3 1/2” set 21 years ago.

Saunders completed her day with winning throws of 111’ 1” and 108’ 4” in discus and javelin, respectively.

Sienna Kaufman added another first-place finish in long jump, beating out teammates Kinsey Kleiner and Addie Berens with a leap of 16’ 1-3/4”.

Kleiner’s jump of 14’ 10-1/2” was an inch and a half further than Berens’ for third.

Between Abby Sechrist and Sterling’s Nikki Clark, Sechrist’s winning time of 2:39.92 was comfortably 20/100ths faster in the 800.

Kleiner, Iris Klein, Eva Franz, and Sechrist’s time of 4:43.64 in the 4x400 meter relay easily beat out runner-up Little River’s 4:58.12.

The Trojans’ quartet of Roxanna Nieto, Kaufman, Klein, and Kleiner also finished first in the 4x100 in 53.91.

The girls closed out their first place finishes with Franz’s winning time of 1:08.44 in the 400.

With 138 points, six individual wins weren’t enough for the boys’ team to upend Solomon’s 150.

But it was a chance for Wes Shaw to continue domination in both shot put and discus, breaking yet another of his records in the latter.

The state’s leader in all classes, Shaw’s winning shot put of 57’ 10” was nearly 15 feet further than Solomon’s runner-up Jobe Fowles.

Shaw’s improvement each week also continued, and after breaking his record a week ago with a discus throw of 171’ 4”, he bettered his old mark by nearly 5 feet.

Nobody was within 50 feet of Shaw’s record-setting throw of 176’ 3”.

Kaden Ward had to fight off stiff challenges from teammates Samuel Damon and Carson Linnens in the long jump, but Ward was able to leap a meet-best 19’ 9 3/4”.

In the 1600, Dillon Boldt paced the eight-runner field in 5:18.86.

Brodie Rathbone rounded out the boys’ top finishers in the 400 with a time of 57.02.

On tap for the Trojans this week is Thursday’s Hesston Invitational with action starting at 3:30 p.m.