Although the medal count was slim, their performance was worthy of gold as five athletes represented Westlock at the 2013 Alberta Schools’ Athletic Association’s Track and Field Championships in Calgary June 7-8.
Conne Lategan scored R.F. Staples School’s only medal, finishing third in the intermediate girls 800m race with a time 2:23.
“That was probably the highlight of our meet in terms of results,” said R.F. Staples track coach Sean van der Lee.
Lategan also finished fourth in the intermediate girls 1,500m race with a personal best time of 5:02.
The school sent five athletes to the event, hosted at Foothills Track Facility in Calgary, and “everybody did good,” said van der Lee.
“I wasn’t there to watch the first day, but I caught up with the results online and on the first day, our junior boys threw discus and Jordan (Tippel) threw a personal best — further than he’d ever thrown before.”
Tippel placed seventh in junior boys discus with a throw of 30.61 metres.
Mariah Letts finished 12th in junior girls triple jump with a best score of 9.27 metres. Letts jumped 4.29 metres in junior girls long jump.
Ameila Kulmatyski placed 12th in intermediate girls discus with a throw of 22.71 metres. Kulmatyski finished in fifth place with a throw off 10.05 metres.
Troy Drezzick placed 13th in junior boys discus with a throw of 26.11 metres.
With the provincial meet behind them, van der Lee and assistant coach Mike Febrarro had plans to improve the athlete’s personal bests for next season, and hopefully it will increasing the medal haul.
“We want to start the season way earlier, like in January,” said van der Lee. “With fitness work and conditioning work indoors because we got a late start on this season.”
