Serving Lucas, Ottawa, Sandusky and Wood Counties
Woodmore had a pair of relay teams perform at the Jesse Owens OHSAA Track & Field State Championships June 4-5, highlighted by a Division V fifth-place finish from the boys 4x100 team. The girls 4x400 team didn’t make it to the finals but finished 16th in the state with a time of 4:09.76 in the Division IV prelims.
“In the beginning of the season, we kind of saw relays as the opportunity for these kids, and they really went for that,” Woodmore head coach Lacy Seamans said. “Our girls swept the relays at our conference meet and then the boys had all four relays make it from districts to regionals. A lot of them gave up individual events to make that happen, so we're really excited to see what these kids can do together. And (I was also impressed with) the girls stepping up to D-4.”
The boys 4x100 team of Lucas Caldwell, Auden Hemminger, Adyn Smith and Landon Rich ran a 43.56 in the prelims at the state meet to qualify for the finals while also establishing a new school record. In the finals, they ran a 43.71 despite a hiccup with one of the handoffs.
“We were ranked sixth coming into the entire meet, fifth after prelims, and that's where they finished, so it was kind of right where they were supposed to be,” Seamans said. “It's fun to move up a little bit from the projections. After regionals, we started looking through the times, and they think they would have won one of the regions and been second in another, so we knew that podium hunting was definitely a possibility. State was on the mind after districts, but then they dropped like a half-second at regionals, and that was the first time they broke the school record.”
Seamans said that relay team has been mostly the same. Caldwell wasn’t in the first invite, and Smith missed one or two meets because he was doing pole vault, but aside from that, they’ve been a consistent group.
“Those four boys work really well together, and they all play football together. They know each other,” Seamans said. “We have Landon as our anchor, and he'd been at a state meet before and kind of led them along and showed them what it was about. He kind of realized what they had.”
Despite being an All-Ohio running back large in stature, Rich was a strong competitor as the anchor leg of the relay.
“With the headwind (in the prelims), some of the times were slower, and having that bigger kid on the anchor leg was definitely an advantage,” Seamans said.
Meanwhile, Seamans said the girls 4x400 relay team of Karli Heins, Wren Lewis, Ariana Florio and Willow Lewis came in ranked 14th before finishing 16th after issues with the second and third handoffs.
“They were hoping to bridge that two-second gap but would have had to have a perfect race,” Seamans said. “Handoffs get super crazy, and we saw a pile-up in the 4x8 right after they ran. Ariana kind of had to skirt by people and Willow went wide. She was a little upset with her time, and I was like, ‘I think you probably ran 420 meters at the end of it.’ Our handoffs weren't really there, but it was a great experience for them.”
And three of them are coming back while Florio graduates.
“None of them are really 400 specialists,” Seamans said. “We kind of put them all together as two distance runners, two sprinters, and met in the middle. It really worked out. Ariana didn't run it until regionals, so we've got a couple girls ready and waiting that got them that far. We’re excited to see what they can do next year.”
