By Marissa Erickson
On March 17th, the Silver Lake Mustang track team traveled to Kearney for the UNK indoor track meet to compete against 18 teams in their first meet of the season.
The girls’ 3200-meter relay, comprised of team members sophomore Morgan Dinkler, junior Georgi tenBensel, freshman Milla Butler, and freshman Sophie Butler, got the running events started off strong for the Mustangs with a third-place finish. Their time of 12:09 narrowly missed second place, trailing by only two seconds. Shortly after, Dinkler ran a great 3200-meter run individually, placing third as well with her time of 14:44. Sophie Butler brought home 5th place in the mile for her high school debut, running 6:50. The 55-meter hurdles saw success from both the girl’s and boy’s Silver Lake teams as tenBensel earned 1st place with her time of 9.75 and senior Brock Karr picked up 5th place with his time of 9.63 seconds. The team finished the day’s running events with a fourth-place finish with a time of 4:59 in the girls’ 1600 meter relay. Team members included freshman Emma Schmidt, Dinkler, freshman Katy Soucek, and tenBensel. In the field events, sophomore Adrian Gomez earned a first-place finish with a personal-best heave of 44′ 4″, beating out the second-place finisher by over a foot.
Head Boys Coach Kyle Conroy said, “It was a difficult first meet. We were able to see where people were at and what we need to work on. I expect everybody to improve and get better as the season progresses, and I know they will because we will be outside and on an outdoor track.”