New Life Academy track & field: Eagles’ boys show strength in hurdles at Park Wolfpack True Team Invitational

The New Life Academy boys and girls track and field teams drove down the road to Cottage Grove to take on some big schools at the Park Wolfpack True Team Invitational on Friday.

With many fewer competitors in the meet, New Life took eighth place in both the boys and girls meets out of eight teams. The NLA boys scored 231 points. The NLA girls had 127 points.

Spring Lake Park/St. Anthony won the boys portion of the meet with 847.50 points, while the Stillwater girls won the True Team meet with 1054.50 points.

In the True Team competition every competitor scores points for their team. In individual events the first place finisher is awarded 24 points, the second 23 points and so on. The 24th place finisher earns one point. In relays the first place team is awarded 32 points, the second 28 points, the third 24 points down to the eighth place team that earns four points.

“While we knew we couldn’t compete for the true team type scoring competition because of the amount of athletes the other schools brought, we thought this would be a significant challenge for some of our older athletes individually,” New Life head coach Tim Otto said. “We had some kids try different events for the first time and they responded really well.

“It was fairly cool and a pretty stiff wind from the south which made all events end into the wind.”

As has been the case in each of the Eagles’ meets this year, NLA did well in the boys hurdle events. In the 300-meter hurdles Dan Otto finished in third place with a time of 41.94 seconds, just ahead of teammate Mark Schreiner, who placed fourth in a 43.03 time. In the 110-meter hurdles, Otto finished in fourth place with a time of 16.33 and Schreiner had a time of 18.13 for 11th place.

In addition, in the boys meet, Dan Sleper took sixth place 5:04.44 and NLA’s Ryan Peterfeso placed 13th with a time of 5:14.35 in the 1600-meter run. Sam Hagen took eighth place in the 800-meter run with a time of 2:12.89. Sam Dufault earned ninth place in the 400 with a time of 56.19. Kyle Linton earned 17th place in the 100-meter dash with a time of 13.05.

In the girls meet, Sarah Olfelt had a nice finish in the 1600-meter run, taking sixth place with a time of 5:51.32. Tori Rogness placed eighth in the 800-meter run with a time of 2:36.67. Sydney Mortensen earned 13th place in the 400-meter dash with a time of 1:07.02 and Abby Gorter took 13th place in the triple jump with a leap of 30 feet, 6 inches.

The next two weeks has NLA traveling a long way from home. Next, the Eagles travel to Princeton for a meet and the following week NLA will compete in the True Team section meet in Arlington.

Tags: track and field, sports, prep, updates