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            Friday and Saturday May 18&19 track teams from across the state competed at Burke Stadium in the NSAA State Meet.  Osmond was well represented with 10 athletes competing in 10 events.  Top performers were Justus Maertins seventh place in the 300 hurdles’ and the girl’s 400-relay teams eighth place finish.

          Justus had a fine race in the preliminaries as he placed third in heat three with his best time ever of 42.30.  He was in lane one of the finals.  After a good start he stayed with the middle of the heat till he hit the fifth hurdle breaking his rhythm.  He did recover to finish in seventh place with a time of 43.24.  Winning time was 40.87.

          Earlier the girls relay team ran from lane eight of the second heat.  They had a nice start and good hand-offs and cruised to fifth place in the second heat.  After comparing time from heat one the Tigers had placed eighth in a time of 53.30. Team members were Kennedy Johnson, Makenzie Johnson, Haven Schultze, and senior Andrea Schmit. Immediately after and in fact during the relay Makenzie Johnson was jumping in the high jump.  She cleared opening height of 4-8 then ran her leg of the relay and returned to attempt 4-10, but close tries couldn’t clear.  She tied for twentieth place.

          Friday morning the boy’s 3200-relay team started the meet for the Tigers.  Johnson Chishiba started off with a very strong opening leg.  Joshua Gansebom and Jared Bessmer also ran well getting the baton to Anthony Heiman.  Anthony ran hard and did run past Crawford to finish in 13^th place in their fastest time of the year 8:54.85.

          In the 100 meter prelims senior Alex Palu finished eighth in heat two in a time of 11.86.  Alex had been fighting a hip flexor injury the last half of the season. Earlier in the girl’s 100 meter prelims Haven Schultze finished seventh in heat two in a time of 13.35.

          In the 400 meter prelims Kennedy Johnson ran a time of 64.73 to place eighth in heat two nearly her best time of the season.  Anthony Heiman finished fifth in heat two in his best time ever of 53.09.  The winning time on Saturday was 50.64. Jared Bessmer then took to the track for the 3200 meters.  Early in the race a strong wind came up and blew dust from the parking lot over the track causing a haze.  This didn’t seem to faze the runners as Jared had a strong finish to place sixteenth in the twenty-four runner field.  His time was near his best at 11:08.76.

          Anthony ran the 800 meters early on Saturday morning.  He was in heat one with the eventual winner and new state record holder Brentyn Wetovick of Fullerton.  Anthony maintained second to Wetovick most of the race till Hunter of Johnson-Brock edged him at the line.  The Osmond junior ran his fastest time of 2:08.69. After heat two Anthony had the tenth fastest time. Wetovick’s record time was 1:56.48.

          “We had a good State Meet” noted Coach Joe Ortmeier, “all of our times were close to or better than their season’s bests.  Everyone competed tough and it was great seeing so many Tigers cross the finish line.”