State Indoor Becomes EDC Preview
The State Indoor, held annually at NDSU, brings together teams from the East and West regions of the state for an early season preview of the outdoor State meet. A winter storm halted travel for all teams from Western and Central North Dakota, but eight teams from Grand Forks, Fargo, and West Fargo made the trip, competing in a preview of the EDC Indoor, scheduled for Friday, April 6th at NDSU. The Red River boys finished 4th, scoring 67.5 points.
Senior Tyler Burian led the charge Friday, posting an impressive time of 23.36 to win the 200m Dash. The time shattered his indoor personal best and is only .12 seconds from the outdoor state qualifying standard. Indoors or outdoors, the time is the third fastest of his career. He also ran strong legs on the 4×200 and 4×400 Relays, both of which finished in 4th place. His 12.5 points was tops for the Rider boys.
| State Indoor Relays |
| 4×200-4th-1:37.71 (Burian, Painter, Dils. Gurung, Pope)
4×200-10th-1:44.97 (Erickson, Dvorak, Bhujel, Diw. Gurung) 4×400-4th-3:40.82 (Painter, Burian, Kroeger, O’Halloran) 4×400-8th-3:53.29 (Onyeka, Eagleton, Pressnell, Dvorak) 4×800-3rd-9:10.82 (Dunham, Simon, Arason, Onyeka) 4×800-9th-10:08.49 (Hugo, Lelm, Diederich, Bartholomew) |
Dafoe’s D-Krew represented well, as seniors Dalton Byrne (4:44.86) and Cole Stenseth (4:45.45) placed 4th and 5th in the Mile Run. Both look to qualify in the 1600m Run during the outdoor season. In the 800m, Stenseth ran to a personal best 2:11.93, placing 7th. In the Two Mile Run, juniors Jake Arason and Thomas Hugo dropped significant time from last week’s performance, finishing in 10:44.06 and 10:47.64, both indoor PR’s. Also posting eye-catching marks in the second heat of the Mile was freshman Ryan Prusak, who continued his march toward a sub-5:00 mile (5:09.68), and 7th grader Matt Rongitsch (5:19.34), who made his high school track and field debut. Both athletes ran their way onto the Red River Cross Country state team this past fall. Matt was the 2017 EDC Middle School Cross Country Champion.
Sophomore Bryce Enerson continued to perform well, racing to a lifetime best of 8.92 in the 60m Hurdles, good enough for 2nd place and 8 points. He also placed 6th in the high jump (5’8) to finish with 11 points on the day. Senior Pierson Painter impressed in relays Friday, notching the fastest 4×200 split (23.0) and the second-fastest 4×400 split (53.6). He also placed fourth in the high jump, clearing 5’8 after finishing the 4×200. Also showing significant potential in the high jump was freshman Will Ubioha, who sat over 5’6. Fresh off the basketball season, Will should continue to clear heights with some more technical work. Senior Thomas O’Halloran, a 200m/400m State Qualifier last year, dropped significant times from last week in a 6th place 400m finish (54.41). His 53.3 split led all Roughriders Friday.
Sophomore Kaden Rohloff cleared 12’0 for the second meet in a row, placing 5th. Classmate Justin Erickson showed great potential as well, clearing 9’0 in his first ever pole vault competition. In the long jump, 8th grader Dilson Gurung, who also played varsity soccer for the Riders this fall, placed 8th with an impressive leap of 19’3. Tommy Stephenson, another regular on the hardwood for RRHS, got back on the triple jump runway for the first time in 2018 and placed 7th at 38’7.75.
Coach Fischer, who received Coach of Day by most Roughrider Track pundits, had plenty of reasons to smile after a number of boys posted PR’s and his girls put on a clinic Friday. The Ogren Brothers continued to improve, with senior Liam reaching 41’3 and sophomore Cole notching the largest PR jump, reaching 40’8. Cole finished last season at 34’2 and opened the 2018 season last week with a 37’6.5 toss. We can only hope Cole continues to improve by 3-4’ every meet. Senior Ryan Ostermeier and freshman Tyler Larson also reached nice PR’s in the competition.
A busy week looms ahead for the Roughriders, with the Bemidji Lions meet on Tuesday and the 3rd edition of the Delmore Decathlon on Wednesday and Thursday.