Rizor, Harris place at state

By ROB HAMILTON

With a fourth-place fin­ish in the Divi­sion III girls’ pole vault last Fri­day, Shelby Rizor con­tin­ues to climb the podium to what she hopes will be a 2013 state championship.

As a fresh­man, she com­peted in the state meet, but didn’t place. Last year, she reached the podium in eighth place as a sophomore.

In this year’s meet, she out­lasted most of the com­pe­ti­tion on her way to tak­ing fourth place with a cleared height of 11’8”.

“I’m pretty proud of fourth,” she said. “It’s a big step up from eighth.”

She cruised through her first few heights with no prob­lems before miss­ing on all three of her attempts at 12 feet.

“I’ve only got­ten 12 feet once this year (at dis­tricts),” she said. “The wind was mess­ing me up. I’d get down towards the pit and it’d start swirling. It also might have been nerves.”

One thing that might have been caus­ing nerves was actu­ally hav­ing com­pe­ti­tion for place­ment at the top of the podium. In the dis­trict and regional meet, she cleared 12’ and 11’8” respectively while the next-closest com­peti­tor only sur­passed 9’. In the state meet, 10 of the 16 girls in the event cleared 10’ or better.

“Mainly when I come in to the meet, it’s me, myself and I,” she said. “It’d be nice to see more com­pe­ti­tion dur­ing the reg­u­lar sea­son, but when I come here, there’s a lot.”

Rizor is hop­ing that next year, she fin­ishes on top of all that competition.

“Next year, I want to actu­ally win it,” she said. “Three seniors fin­ished one-two-three this year and I was fourth, so hope­fully I’ll be first.”

Another Indian track ath­lete, Ethan Har­ris, also reached the podium by plac­ing eighth in the 300 hurdles.

In Friday’s pre­lims, the junior fin­ished with the eighth-fastest qual­i­fy­ing time of 40.4. Then, in Saturday’s finals, he fin­ished eighth of nine com­peti­tors in 40.51 to snare the final spot on the podium.

“It was a lit­tle rough,” he said of his finals race. “I clipped a bunch of hur­dles — it wasn’t my clean­est race. I used my God-given tal­ent enough to get eighth place.”

In the region­als, Har­ris claimed his per­sonal best time of 39.58, which he noted would have put him higher on the podium.

“My P.R. would have put me fifth or sixth,” he said. “I had a lit­tle too much juice going — I was too excited.”

Another Mount Gilead ath­lete, Jessie Baldridge, com­peted in the dis­cus where she closed out her high school ath­letic career by plac­ing 16th with a throw of 99’7” after foul­ing on her first two attempts.

North­mor Knights

Northmor’s Ethan Nichols closed out his high school career with a sec­ond straight appear­ance in the Divi­sion III state meet’s pole vault.

While Nichols wasn’t able to place in the event for a second-straight year, he did take 11th place by clear­ing 13’.

Five under­class­men mem­bers of the North­mor girls’ team also com­peted in the state meet.

In the shot put, junior Kris Pfis­ter placed 16th with a top effort of 32’5.5”. Fresh­man Allie Tupps com­peted in the pre­lims of the 400, where she fin­ished her race in 1:02.39.

Also, the 400-meter relay team of Tupps, Chantel Cline, Tayler Coul­son and Gabrielle Woods fin­ished with the 13th best time of 52.72.

Posted by Rob Hamilton on Jun 6 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.