The Philomath High School boys and girls track and field teams will compete in its final regular-season varsity meet before the Oregon West Conference Championships with Friday’s appearance in the Wally Ciochetti Invitational at Cottage Grove.
The meet’s events has a set number of maximum entries and as of Wednesday morning, Warriors coach Joe Fulton said Philomath’s participation list showed 27 girls and 15 boys.
“Each team is allowed to enter three athletes per event; however, they are only taking the top 24 entrants in each event except the high jump (top 20) and the pole vault (top 15),” Fulton said. “The only event where the meet director will take more than three entries from a team is the girls 3,000 since not many teams entered that event. Therefore, Philomath will have five girls in the 3,000.”
Philomath has at least one athlete making the cut in every event for the girls and in 15 of the 17 events for the boys, which Fulton said is impressive for a meet of its quality.
On Tuesday, the Warriors sent junior varsity teams to compete in the Newport Invitational, which featured varsity squads from the other schools. Heidi Bacho’s winning mark of 28 feet, 4 inches in the shot put qualified her for the Ciochetti meet, Fulton said.
Also, Autumn Cluster earned a spot in the varsity conference championships with a time of 55.55 seconds in the 300 hurdles.
Joining Bacho with top-three finishes at Newport were Alexa Eckhold in the 800 (second, 2:42.31), Hanna McDaniel in the 1,500 (second, 5:32.79), Madison Juhl in the discus (second, 106-7), Eevi Rolfe in the high jump (third, 4-4), Aspen Russell in the triple jump (second, 30-0) and Madison Schaffer and Russell in the pole vault (tied for third, 7-6).
For the boys, Jonathan Doig tied for third in the pole vault (9-0) and Seth Arthurs was third in the long jump (18-1.75).
