Boys team comes in second
By Kevin Cunningham
Correspondent
The Whitewater High School boys and girls track teams participated in three meets last week.
On Saturday, the Whippets hosted the Randy Lyon Memorial Invitational.
The invitational is named after Randy Lyon, a former Whippet track-and-field athlete who was a four-time conference champion and state runner-up who died from cancer a few years ago. Lyon’s family gives away a scholarship every year at the meet, and at Saturday’s meet, Lan Vo won the scholarship.
About 30 minutes later, Vo ran her lifetime-best in the 300-meter hurdles. With Vo’s second-place finish, the Whippets’ girls team finished first in the five-team invitational.
Ali Ketterhagen won the 400-meter dash, Nicole Frison won the 100-meter hurdles, Huong Vo won the 300-meter hurdles and the relay team of Maritza Xochipa, Keeley Fiedler, Morgan Wiedenhoeft and Morgan Radaj finished first in the 4×100-meter relay. The girls recorded at least six other personal bests in the meet.
On the boys side, Xhonatan Shahollari was out the past two weeks with a small quad injury but came back in a big way, said head coach John Houwers.
“He cleared a lifetime-best of 6 foot 3 inches in winning the high jump, putting him seventh in the all-time top 10 high jumpers in WHS history,” Houwers said. “He won the triple jump going 41 feet 3 inches and was on the winning 4- by 100-meter relay team.”
Connor Rupke, Tyler Sheffield and Alvin Tillett accompanied Shahollari on the relay team. The 4×400-meter relay team also won, thanks to Mike and Matt Mattingly, Jose Villegas and Logan Rasmussen.
At least seven other boys’ performances were personal bests. The boys team finished second in the meet behind Fort Atkinson.
On Tuesday, the teams participated in their third meet of the week against Evansville in the team’s last dual meet of the season. The girls’ performance proved to be just good enough, besting Evansville, 73-72.
The boys won a tight one as well, 75-67. The boys won three of four relays, and five boys won individual performances as well.
The girls won just one of the four relays, but individually, Wiedenhoeft won the 100- and 200-meter dashes with both being personal-bests. The pole vault also proved to be vital, as the Whippets took first, second and third in that event.
Houwers said the meet was a good tune-up for the remaining 2 1/2 weeks of the season before the conference championship meet. The Whippets’ next action is slated to start at 4 p.m. Thursday in an eight-team invitational at Elkhorn Area High School.
