By Joe Stuver
Despite their overall youth, and despite having missed last year’s season due to COVID, the young Broadus Hawks and Lady Hawks are making improvements every week and at every meet as the season winds down.
Last year’s season was of course completely canceled, meaning that this year the teams are “basically starting over,” said veteran coach Jerry Coulter. “This year is actually going pretty good for having a lot of freshman boys in our program. Seven out of 11 are freshmen, but they’re doing pretty well for their age group. When you are a freshman running against juniors and seniors it’s hard, but we’ve kept our focus so we can get better by districts.”
Coulter said too that without a season last year, he had to even go out and repaint the track curbs on our local field.
“We’ve been real active though. We have had a couple of postponements, but we’ve been able to make those up and get to all of the meets we wanted to.”
The team traveled to Colstrip last Thursday. “Although Colstrip and Roundup were there, we competed against seven of our smaller schools, which was excellent for our kids,” said Coulter. “We did good. We placed second in the boys and second in the girls, despite the fact that we only had two girls there.”
He continued: “Thursday was music night with Ekalaka so some of our kids were there. That happens with smaller schools with such small numbers, so as a coach you have to be flexible. Some years I haven’t seen all of the kids at one time at a meet until districts.”
The district meet is May 13, “so that’s only a little over three weeks away”, Coulter said.
Broadus had several bests at Colstrip. “Jaxon Bilbrey, a freshman, won the triple jump with a personal best that was at least two feet longer than the closest competitor.”
Bilbrey took the gold behind a fine jump of 35 feet and five and three quarters of an inch.
Junior athlete Abigail Martin also had a personal best with a first place winning effort in the high jump of four feet, five inches. “That was impressive. It’s a big improvement over her four feet, two inch mark.”
Individual marks were as follows.
Boys: 121 points for second.
100 meter run, Eli Heacock, 13.88.
200 meter run, Matt Hanson, 29.23 and Bilbrey, fifth, 27.64.
400 meter run: Bilbrey, fourth place, 59.31.
800 meter run: Heacock, third, 2:25; Brandon Rogers, fifth, 2:34 and Josh Rasmussen, sixth, 2:49.
1600 meter run: Heacock, fourth, 5:30 and Rogers, sixth, 5:47.
110 meter hurdles, Matt Hanson, second, 22.06.
300 meter hurdles, M. Hanson, second, 51.83.
Javelin, Kyle Minow, second, 121 feet, 3 inches; Tytan Hanson, fifth, and Grayson Arithson, 95 feet 5 inches.
Shot put: Minow, fourth, 36 feet, 11 inches; T. Hanson, fifth, 33 feet, 4 inches.
Discus, T. Hanson, second, 102 feet, 4 inches; Minow, third, 101 feet, and Arithson, 67 feet.
High jump, Bilbrey, fourth, 5 feet even.
Triple Jump, Bilbrey, first, 35 feet, 5 and ¾ inches.
400-meter relay, second, 51.98 with runners Colton Williams, Heacock, M. Hanson and Minow.
1600-meter relay, second, 4:07.39 with Minow, Williams, Bilbrey and Heacock.
Lady Hawks, 46 points:
100 meter run, Abigail Martin, fourth, 14.78.
200 meter run, Martin, third, 31.09 (personal best).
1600 meter run, Rachel Rasmussen, fifth, 7:03.
3200 meter run, Rasmussen, third, 15:22.
100-meter hurdles, Rasmussen, fifth.
Javelin, Martin, second, 83 feet, 6 feet 9 inches; Rasmussen, fifth, 68 feet, 3 inches.
High jump, Martin, fifth, 4 feet, 5 inches.
“This is an important week for us this coming Saturday in Laurel. We get to run against some of the teams in our district,” Jerry said.
Saturday, May 1 it’s off to Miles City. “Then, it’s our district on the 13th. The season is winding down.”
This is Coulter’s thirty second year as head coach of the Hawk track teams. “It’s been really good,” the coach reflected. “We used to run on dirt tracks but now we’ve got some excellent all weather tracks. Nobody goes to dirt anymore, plus everyone likes to go to Baker, Glendive, Miles City, Colstrip and Lockwood. Our times now are a lot faster than they used to be.”
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