Last season marked the second straight year the Mid-Prairie girls track team climbed the mountain and brought home a class 2A state championship, and the Golden Hawks are hungry for a third-in-a-row. After a successful regular season, Mid-Prairie finished as state qualifier runners-up at Eddyville-Blakesburg and sent nine events to the blue oval in Des Moines. Once at Drake Stadium, the Golden Hawks took the state team championship by a 49-39 score over Applington-Parkersburg. Paving the way for Mid-Prairie’s title run were three individual event state championships including Marie Hostetler in the 1500 and 3000 and the distance medley team of Abbagail Evans, Cassidy Rourke, Amber Swart and Marie Hostetler that won gold by .02 seconds. Other top finishes at state for Mid-Prairie included Hostetler as runner-up in the 800, fourth place for the sprint medley team of Maddie Edgington, Rourke, Mitzi Evans and Swart, fourth place for the 4×200 team of Swart, Edgington and Mitzi and Abbagail Evans, Tori Boyse eighth in the discus and ninth for the 4×800 team of Angelina Evans, Abbagail Evans, Moriah Brase, and Kate Cavanagh. This week Golden Hawk head coach Chris Tyler talked about this year’s edition of the Hawks. “Sidney Davis, a junior had a great year last year in the hurdles. Also helping in the hurdle group is Amara Jones, Olivia Poock, Emily Schlabaugh, Jill Owen and Sarah Meader. Alyssa McDowell and Colby Brown are showing some good signs. Marie Hostetler has had a great start to the season in practice, no competitions yet. At Dickinson Relays indoor at UNI we had Tori Boyse place 18th in the discus out of a couple hundred. Angelina Evans ran an open 15 and was close to a PR, Mitzi Evans ran the open 400 hundred and hit a minute flat point three and placed fourth. Her older sister Abbagail ran a 1:03 and placed 11th. We also have a lot of freshmen ready to step in.”

The state athletic organizations have set a tentative date of May 1st for a return to practice and May 4th for competition following the COVID-19 activities shut down.