Friday, the Iowa High School Athletic Association announced the final field for this year’s Class 1A state track and field meet in Des Moines. Hillcrest Academy will be represented on the blue oval this year by freshman Owen Scott. His leap of 20’3.5” at the Class 1A qualifier at WACO Thursday night was enough for a long jump ticket to Drake Stadium. This week on the KCII Radio Coaches Corner, Hillcrest head coach Marty Gingerich broke down Scott’s performance Thursday in Wayland. “Owen had his longest jump in his first jump. He was ready to go out of the gate. The cutoff for state is usually high 19 or a low 20 foot. Sometimes you can wrap a lot of emotional energy up into waiting to find out (if you qualified), but Owen is pretty cool cat. If he has a lot of anxiety or emotion he doesn’t show it. I’ve learned too that it works best just to wait and not worry about it one way or another. When the results come out, deal with whether you have or not then.”
His mark places him 16th in the field of 24. Several other athletes from the KCII listening area will compete in the 1A boys long jump including: top seed Cam Buffington from Winfield-Mt. Union, fifth seed Kaden Amigon from Columbus, and sixth seed Simeon Reichenbach from WACO. Hillcrest has qualified at least one event for state each year since the 2020 COVID shutdown, including Leah Bontrager in 2022 for the 800 and the last male athlete, Aaron Hershberger in 2021 for the 110 and 400m hurdles. Scott will take the runway for long jump at the state track and field meet at Drake Stadium in Des Moines Thursday morning at 9a.m. Hourly state track meet updates begin on AM and FM KCII Thursday morning and continue through next weekend. Full, updated results are also available free, online, at KCIIradio.com.