We have reached the culmination of our top 10 countdown of the best sports stories from the 2021-22 academic year with number one on our list. The best story for Washington takes us to the spring when the Demon boys’ track team put together a weekend to remember at the Blue Oval. 

The defending Southeast Conference Champion Demons had a lot of weapons coming back for 2022 and they lived up to the hype all season long. The orange and black posted numerous meet wins in the regular season, captured their second straight SEC title, and they showed out in a class 3A district in Mount Pleasant where they had an eye-popping 20 different qualifying events for the State Track and Field Meet on May 19th-21st. Those qualifiers translated into plenty of medal finishes in Des Moines headlined by state champion Elijah Morris. The junior defended his 400m title in 2021 by downing the competition once again clocking in at 48.96 seconds to break a 50-year old school record. Brayden Hartman finished way ahead of his seed in the discus to nab a silver medal and the distance medley relay also placed second with this squad being Ethan Patterson, Jacob Miller, Morris, and Lance Sobaski. Other top eight finishes for Washington included the sprint medley of Patterson, Austin Rebling, Miller, and Morris finishing third, Sobaski tallying fourth in the 3200m, sixth in the 800m, and sixth in the 1600m, and Hartman managed eighth in the shot put. The team racked up 44 points to place fourth overall in class 3A. The Washington girls had a pair of state qualifiers in Quincy Griffis in the 3000m and Abigail Kleese in the 800m. 

This concludes our top 10 countdown for the Demons. If you missed any of our stories find them online at kciiradio.com.