BELLEVILLE – Alton’s girls track team advanced two relay teams and three individuals to next weekend’s IHSA Class 3A state meet at Eastern Illinois University’s O’Brien Stadium at Friday’s Class 3A Belleville West Sectional.
The 4×100 and 4×200 relay teams are moving on to Charleston, as well as high jumper Katie Mans, who won her third straight sectional crown in the event, Jeanea Epps in the 100 meters and Rayn Tally in the discus throw.
The Redbirds tied with Chatham Glenwood in 10th as a team with 18 points each; East St. Louis won the team title with 91 points, followed by O’Fallon (68) Quincy (66), Springfield (51.5), Belleville West and Rock Island (46 each), Edwardsville (43), Belleville East (32), Normal West (24), the Redbirds and Titans, Moline (17.5), Galesburg (16), Granite City (12), Pekin (5), Collinsville (3) and East Moline United (1).
“I am ecstatic just to see my girls make it,” said first-year Redbird coach Jada Moore. “This is my first year and it’s always a goal to get the most there, especially it being my stomping grounds (Moore is an EIU graduate); I’m so excited.”
A total of nine teams moved on to the state meet in the 4×100 relay – including Edwardsville and Granite City – which indicates how strong the Southwestern Conference is, Moore felt. “That means our conference is very competitive,” Moore said. “Running in this conference is always going to make us better; it’s good to have these teams around us to keep pushing us.”
The 4×400 relay team Katie and Kellie Mans, Jessica Markel and Raishia Johnson just missed qualifying for state, finishing sixth in 4:09.88; Kellie Mans also just missed out on a state berth in the 400 meters, finishing sixth in 1:00.98.
“My team is very young,” Moore said. “It just shows me I have so much more to build on; we’re still a work in progress. For them to be so close and be so young and for them to want it so bad makes me excited.”
The 4×100 team of Epps, TyRiss Holliday, Daysha Lacey and Alleyah Tuggle took seventh in 48.63 seconds and the 4×200 team of Epps, Holliday, Lacey and Tuggle finished eighth in 1:44.46; both teams beat the state qualifying standard to move on to Charleston.
Katie Mans cleared 5-5 to win the high jump, while Tally had a toss of 116-11 to take fifth and Epps ran a 12.61 in the 100 for a 12th-place finish, beating the state-qualifying mark in those events to move on. The top two finishers in each event and all those who reached the state-qualifying marks moved on to Charleston.
The state meet begins Thursday with qualifying events; qualifying continues on Friday and the finals in all three classes will take place Saturday.
