Panther Twilight-2011

The Panther Twilight Track and Field meet was held last Friday under some ideal conditions and with a strong field of participants.

The eight schools represented in this year’s edition included 4A Union and Battleground, 3A Fort Vancouver, and 2A Washougal, RA Long, Mark Morris, Hockinson and Centralia.

Many Panther athletes achieved personal records and/or season best performances contributing to a 2^nd place team finish for the boys and a 3^rd place team finish for the girls. Union High School won both of the team titles.

Four individuals had efforts that deserve special recognition. Three Seniors, participating in the final home track meet of their career set school records.

Brendan Casey set a new school record in the Pole Vault with a vault of 14’ 6”. He also won the Javelin with a toss of 171’ 6” and was named as the Boy Co-Athlete of the meet.

Dylan Croeni set new school record marks in the 1600M (4:23.21) and the 3200M (9:25.20) and was also named as the Boy Co-Athlete of the meet.

Kelley Young exhibited a dominating performance in winning the 100M Hurdles with a hand held time of 15.53, which when converted to the fully automatic timing equivalent is 15.84. Kelly currently holds the school record in this event at 15.83, the time that she ran in finishing 2^nd at last year’s state track meet. (The timing system did not catch the flash of the gun on Kelley’s race on Friday so the hand held back-up times had to be used.) While technically not a true school record by only one one-hundredth of a second, her performance is deserving of special recognition.

Two Juniors also turned in outstanding performances in winning their events, and one also set a school record.  Katelyn Wright broke the school record that she had shared with Roxie Niedert of 5’ 3”, with an incredible jump of 5’ 4”.  She also placed 2^nd in the long jump with a distance of 16’ 0 ½”.  Kendall Utter dueled it out with a competitor from RA Long throughout the race and prevailed in the 800M with a victory, and an outstanding time on 2:27 which puts at 3^rd fastest all-time in school history at that event.

Please congratulate these and the many other Panther Track Athletes, and Head coach Dave Hajek and his staff , on putting an another quality event that we can all be proud of.