Eastern edges Western for MIC boys track title

Kokomo Tribune - Wednesday, May 11, 2011

RUSSIAVILLE — In one of the most competitive Mid-Indiana Conference meets in years, the Eastern boys track and field team (127) narrowly defended its league crown here Tuesday, edging runner-up Western (125) and third-place Lewis Cass (109).

First believed to have been tied with the Panthers after 16 events, a re-placing of the 1,600-meter race — run hours earlier — gave the advantage to the Comets.

Maconaquah was fourth with 91, followed by Northwestern (62), Hamilton Heights (61), Peru (29) and Taylor (11).

“I have the utmost respect for these other teams that can really shuffle their people,” said Eastern coach Paul Nicholson, whose squad had defeated coach Marvin Boswell’s Panthers 117-79 in the Howard County meet just six days previous.

“Western did an unreal job of making it unbelievably close. [Boswell] had every person down to the exact thing they needed to be doing.

“We made some adjustments too, which in the end got us three extra points. You just don’t know how one little tweak is going to make this kind of a difference.”

In the girls meet, Heights withstood another sterling performance by Eastern’s Neeley twins, totaling 144 points to the Comets’ 123.

The host Panthers (98) were third with Cass (86) fourth, Northwestern (73) fifth, Maconaquah (52) sixth, Peru (35) seventh and Taylor (10) eighth.

Bethany Neeley was the meet’s lone quadruple winner. She captured the 800, the 1,600, the 300 hurdles — breaking the conference record in the process — and anchored the winning 4x800 relay.

“[The record] was about the only thing that went right,” Neeley said of her winning time of 45.75 seconds. “It’s really disappointing to know we worked this hard and weren’t even close [to Heights]. We did struggle in a lot of events [Tuesday] and they deserved it.”

Blake Thomas in the 100 dash and Reid LaRowe in the 110 high hurdles were the only winners for the Comet boys, who received second-place efforts from Joey Price (discus), Braden Barnett (high jump), Grant Cole (300 hurdles) and the 4x400 relay team.

The Panthers were snake-bitten by a dropped baton in the 4x100 relay as they held a comfortable lead heading into the final exchange, costing Western 10 points.

“That race really hurt,” said Boswell. “When you’re out in front as far as we were, you don’t expect that out of seniors. And we had three instances [Tuesday] night where we had seniors let us down big-time.

“But those are things you have to bounce back from and I think the kids did.”

Sophomore Matt Riley set a Western school record of :50.73 in winning the 400 dash. He also won the 200, was second in long jump and fourth in high jump.

Brittany Neeley was a three-time winner for the Eastern girls. She captured the 200 meters and the 400 meters while finishing second in the 100. She ran a heroic, come-from-behind anchor of the victorious 4x400 relay team for the Comets, the defending champions.