BELLEVILLE – The Edwardsville boys track team had many solid performances in winning the Norm Armstrong Invitational meet on Saturday at Belleville West’s Bob Goalby Field with 61 points, beating out Homewood-Flossmoor, who finished second with 58 points. Minooka was third with 53 points, Plainfield North was fourth with 49, and Lockport was fifth at 48.
“I’m happy with our performance,” Tigers head coach Chad Lakatos said in an interview held during the meet. “We’ve got nice weather, a great meet, and great competition. Our times have in several of the races have been the best they’ve been all year, so, pleased with that. Our 4×100 (meter relay team) ran a season-best, we looked good in the 2-mile with Max (Hartmann) and Zach (Walters), so we’re happy with where we are. Kenyon (Johnson) looked good in the long jump, won that with 22-6. So we’re moving along, and kids are progressing as they should when the weather gets nice.”
Lakatos felt that the Edwardsville athletes are getting better near the end of the first month of the season, and is optimistic that everyone will keep improving,
“We keep getting better,” Lakatos said, “and that’s the bottom line, is the work we put in practice, hopefully, will translate to meets, and we’re starting to see that.”
For the second month of the year, Lakatos is optimistic for the remainder of the season.
“Hopefully, we can start to figure out where guys need to be,” Lakatos said, “according to what meet we’re in, and our times continue to improve.”
Hartmann finished second in the 3,200-meters with a time of 9:44.90, while Walters was sixth at 9:51.05, while Daniel Powell was seventh in the 300-meter hurdles at 41.38 seconds. Roland Prenzler and Jack Pifer finished one-two in the 1,600-meters with times of 4:27.01 and 4:28.27 respectively. The 4×400 meter relay team of Jackson Borden, Brennan Tolle, Josh Reed, and Brandon Battle finished fourth with a time of 3:32.09.
In the field events, Johnson did pick up a win for the Tigers with a leap of 22’ 6” in the long jump, while Cameron Fitzpatrick was second in the discus throw, tossing a 135’ 5”.
Dan Brannan also contributed to this story.
