Woodbury a surprise winner at Wildcat Invitational meet

• Ryan Ness

Ryan Ness and his 4x800 relay teammates took second in the event as the Woodbury boys track and field squad took third in the Rosemount Invitational on Friday, April 30. Ness also ran a personal-best time of 2:01.5 to take second in the 800-meter run at the Invite. Rivertown Photo by Brian Hall.

Talk about it

Woodbury boys track and field coach Jim Scott wasn’t displeased at what he thought was a third-place finish at the Wildcat Invitational on Tuesday, April 27.

“I thought we did well — couldn’t complain,” he said.

Yet, as the Royals boarded the bus and left Eagan High School after Bloomington Jefferson took a victory lap as the perceived victory of the Invite, no one thought at the time that the wrong team was being congratulated.

“It wasn’t until the morning that we found out that we actually won,” Scott said. “I still have no idea what went wrong, but some scores hadn’t been counted yet or something.”

Sometime from supper to breakfast, Woodbury had leapt over both the host Wildcats and the fraudulently first-place Jaguars to win the meet by 12 points, with a total — correct — score of 121.

“It was a pretty big difference,” Scott said. “But, hey, we’ll take it.”

Anthony Osifuye claimed two of the Royals’ individual first-place finishes, winning both the long jump and triple jump.

On the track, Brady Johnson also claimed a win in the 300-hurdles, with the quartet of Ving Le, Kevin Lance, Christian Gomeztagle and Ben Rollins also taking top honors.

Yet, it wasn’t until Woodbury’s next meet, at Rosemount on Friday, April 30, that they received the Wildcat Invite championship trophy that was rightfully theirs.

“(Eagan) brought it with them to Rosemount, so we got to carry it around there, which was pretty cool,” Scott said.

However, the Royals would not be claiming any additional hardware from the Irish as Rosemount cruised to a sizable victory in their own Invite, claiming 219 points as Woodbury finished in third — for real this time — with 115.

“Rosemount has a very tough team,” Scott said. “There’s so many of them, the’ve got five runners in each race.”

For Woodbury, Marty Joyce took first place in the 3200-meter run, with Johnson again claiming a victory in the 300 hurdles, as did the 4x400-meter relay team of Johnson, Gomeztagle, Jed Ig-Izevbekhai and Osifuye.

Personal best performances were turned in by Ryan Ness and Torsten Rotto at the meet as Ness ran a time of 2:01.5 to take second in the 800-meter run, with Rotto hurling a 46 feet, 9 inch result to take sixth in the shot put.

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