MUNCIE — After delaying Tuesday’s girls track and field sectionals with storms across the state, Mother Nature looked much more kindly upon the IHSAA boys track and field sectionals on Thursday, May 21.
Conditions were perfect at Muncie Central High School, with temperatures hovering in the mid-to-low 60s and a slight breeze throughout the meet. The Bearcats hosted Sectional 12, which also featured Alexandria Monroe, Cowan, Delta, Jay County, Monroe Central, Muncie Burris, Randolph Southern, Union (Modoc), Union City, Wapahani, Wes-Del, Winchester Community and Yorktown.
Meanwhile, athletes from Blue River Valley, Daleville, New Castle and Shenandoah competed in Sectional 22 at Mt. Vernon (Fortville), and those from Blackford competed in Sectional 11 at Marion.
Here are the highlights from the Muncie Central sectional, followed by all of the regional qualifiers from East Central Indiana.
Muncie Central defends home track with sectional championship
Last season marked the return of sectional action to Muncie Central after two years, and head coach Tacoma Archuleta promised his team a trophy on their home track. The Bearcats were disappointed last year after Yorktown denied them that, but they flipped the script this time around and controlled the meet from start to finish.
Central won its 59th boys track and field sectional in school history with a team score of 151, beating out Yorktown’s 120 and Delta’s 94.
“Honestly, for these guys, I think tonight meant the world to them,” Archuleta said. “Last year, we sat in the locker room over there. It was our first time hosting the meet after two years, and it was a very somber night. I gave them promises of winning trophies shaped like Indiana, and we didn’t follow through with it. Tonight, we followed through.
“That’s the first thing Terry Miles said is, ‘Hey, a win’s not a win unless it’s shaped like Indiana.'”
Miles, a senior Bearcat, was one of Central’s top performers on the night. He set personal bests in the 400-meter dash (51.07 seconds) and 200-meter dash (23.65 seconds) en route to second and third place finishes, respectively. Miles was also the long jump sectional champion with a leap of 21-3 feet.
“Coming off of last year, not winning it, qualifying for regionals but still not qualifying for state, we just needed this one bad,” Miles said. “We’ve been working hard all season, and we deserved it. We worked hard. Last year, we got beat, and you’ve got to come back when you get beat. You’ve got to win, and we got that win.”
Central got early momentum from some very close wins. After the 20-minute break between preliminaries and finals, junior Kye Hiatt barely beat out Winchester senior Carter Campbell for first place in the 110-meter hurdles finals, winning by a mere 0.01 seconds — 15.02 seconds (a new personal best for Hiatt) to 15.03. Three events later, the Bearcats won the 4×100 by 0.02 seconds — 43.90 seconds to 43.92 — to edge out the Golden Falcons once again.
“With wins like that, the points are awesome, but the electricity that it creates, the momentum, just how much it fires up our guys where we’re able to go over to whoever’s next up and say, ‘Hey, you see that?’ and they say, ‘Yes, I’m fired up!’ Those are what those performances really give us, and it felt like the train didn’t slow down at all tonight,” Archuleta said.
When Central principal Chris Walker handed over the sectional trophy, it was Jacob Tyler who received it and lifted the Indiana-shaped prize into the air. Tyler, a senior leader who was a regional qualifier in the 4×800 and 4×400, was then also lifted into the air by his excited teammates, crowd-surfing his way across the Bearcat logo at the 50-yard line of the football field.
“If I’m being 100% honest, it was really unexpected,” Tyler said of the crowd-surfing. “We’re going to keep the same mentality. We’re just going to take a lot more work, knowing it’s going to be a lot more competition, but we know we’re built for it. We trust our training, we trust our coaches, we trust the work we put in, and we’re all excited.”
Yorktown dominates distance events
While Yorktown was unable to repeat as sectional champions for the first time since its 1995-98 four-peat, the Tigers enjoyed a dominant evening in the long-distance runs. The meet-opening 4×800 relay was expected to be very tight between Yorktown, Delta and Central, but the Tigers’ team of sophomore Logan Fulton, junior Cody Lee, sophomore Thomas Loney and junior Wyatt Turner won convincingly, nearly finishing in under eight minutes with a time of 8:00.37.
“That was just the plan. For the first event on track, you always want to take care of business and have momentum flowing your way,” Turner said. “I think that was definitely a big point of emphasis, and another point is confidence. Just have confidence, we know we can run those fast times, we know we can win that race, just putting it on paper and putting it all on the track is the main focus going into that one.”
Later in the meet, the Tigers won the top two spots in both the 1,600 and 3,200-meter runs. Turner repeated as the sectional champion in the 1,600-meter run with a time of 4:33.14, while freshman Louie Pevler took second at 4:39.28. Turner was thoroughly impressed by his young teammate’s sectional debut.
“Absolutely insane,” Turner said. “He’s crazy. The jumps he’s made this year, it’s amazing, and for him to come out here and finish second at the sectional, even crazier.”
The 3,200 produced a very exciting finish between two Tigers, as junior Owen Lamb beat out Loney for first place by just 0.09 seconds. Lamb’s personal-best time of 9:50.35 narrowly beat out Loney’s 9:50.44, but Loney said it was one of the only times he could remember where he didn’t mind second place at all.
“That was a lot of fun,” Loney said. “That was the most fun race I’ve ran in a while, and it was just because (Lamb) was right there. I’ve trained with him all year, and he’s just a great guy. Nobody better to run with than him.”
Wapahani produces three sectional champs
Wapahani had a strong showing with a trio of senior sectional champions and regional qualifiers in seven total events. Grady Mahaffey was a big winner in the field events, as the senior won the high jump at 6-4 feet and placed second in the long jump at 21-2 feet. As the meet got started, Mahaffey was switching back and forth between his high jumps and his opening flight of long jumps, making sure the officials knew what he was doing as he juggled two events at once.
“It was a lot of preparation in these past weeks,” Mahaffey said. “At my body weight, it’s kind of hard for me to get my body and stuff. I don’t look like a standard jumper. A lot of icing, a lot of stretching, but really, it’s all mental. If you tell yourself you can do something and you put in the work, you can do it.”
Fellow senior Preston McCorkhill took care of business in the 400-meter dash, winning the sectional title with a time of 49.15 seconds and completing the county, conference and sectional champion trifecta.
Mason Tomboni, another senior, was the Raiders’ third sectional champion, as he won the 800-meter run with a personal-best time of 1:59.07. Tomboni has been battling a stress reaction in his right shin this season but returned just in time to run the 1,600 at the Mid-Eastern Conference meet last week and become a sectional champion in the 800.
“I’ve been doing a lot of biking and swimming, and that’s all I’ve been doing. I haven’t been doing any running,” Tomboni said. “I’m pretty confident in my bike regimen because I’m a state champion in triathlon, so I knew that I could get ready for my races like conference last week and then this week. I’ve just been doing workouts in the water, doing bike workouts.”
The three seniors will be joined at next week’s regional by another senior — Jason Rahe, who placed third in the 1,600 — and two younger teammates. Sophomore Connor Marcum placed third in the 300-meter hurdles with a personal-best time of 42.80 seconds, and freshman Wilsen Rhoades helped Marcum, Tomboni and McCorkhill finish second in the 4×400. The Raiders, especially the seniors, took pride in continuing the school’s recent tradition of track success.
“Wapahani’s really good at sports,” Tomboni said. “We’ve got a lot of really good talent in every sport. It’s kind of like the mindset of Wapahani — you have to be good at your sport. Last year, we had three as well, so I knew this year we were probably going to have a lot of success.”
Winchester’s Carter Campbell goes 4-for-4 … again
Last season, Winchester’s Campbell qualified for regionals in all four of the events he ran. He repeated that feat in his senior season by winning the 300-meter hurdles and 200-meter dash, placing second in the 110-meter hurdles and anchoring the Golden Falcons’ second-place 4×100 team.
“It’s hard work at the beginning of the season not trying to burn out too fast,” Campbell said. “It’s a season of lasting the longest, just working up to sectional and making sure I’m ready for my events. Conditioning, keeping my body healthy.”
Campbell was less than a second away from a truly dominant night with narrow losses to Muncie Central in the 110 hurdles and 4×100. Losing his first two races by a hair served as fuel for Campbell to perform his best in the 300 hurdles and the 200. He left no doubt in the hurdles, beating out Hiatt by more than two seconds, but the 200 was another very narrow finish. This time, Campbell was on the winning end of it, as he beat out Delta senior Grey Backus by 0.02 seconds — 22.98 seconds to 23.00.
“It’s good to use as motivation, getting beat by a hundredth of a second,” Campbell said. “I just used the motivation to make me run harder, make sure I won the rest of my events.”
IHSAA boys track and field regional qualifiers from East Central Indiana
Sectional 12 at Delta
4×800 relay
110-meter hurdles
100-meter dash
1,600-meter run
4×100 relay
400-meter dash
300-meter hurdles
800-meter run
200-meter dash
3,200-meter run
4×400 relay
Pole Vault
Discus
High Jump
Long Jump
Shot Put
Sectional 11 at Marion
3,200-meter run
Sectional 22 at Mt. Vernon (Fortville)
110-meter hurdles
300-meter hurdles
200-meter dash
Pole Vault
High Jump
Contact Cade Hampton via email at cbhampton@usatodayco.com or on X, formerly known as Twitter, @CadeHamp10.
This article originally appeared on Muncie Star Press: Top performers from East Central Indiana at IHSAA boys track sectionals
Reporting by Cade Hampton, Muncie Star Press / Muncie Star Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
