Seymours won the opening event, the 4×800 relay, and the final event, the 4×400 relay, and scored big points in several events in between to easily win the Seymour Girls Track and Field Sectional at Bulleit Stadium on Tuesday night.
The Owls scored 148.5 points with Paoli second with 78, and Bedford North Lawrence was third with 71.5 points. Brownstown Central placed sixth with 50 points, and Crothersville was eighth with 28.5 points.
Hayley Harpe, Brooke Trinkle, Samantha Jacobi and Vivienne Siefker teamed up to win the 4×8 relay, while Addison Lemon, Sydney Montgomery, Trinkle and Harpe made up the 1600 relay team that crossed the finish line first.
Jennings County won the Seymour Sectional two years ago, and there wasn’t any sectional or any season last spring because of COVID-19.
Several of the girls said they were happy to have helped the Owls win the trophy this spring, and coach Spencer Sunbury called it a team effort.
Jacobi said in the first relay, “I tried to keep the gap we had in front of the other teams. I just wanted to maintain that because I didn’t want to kill myself on that because I still had the 800 left.”
Trinkle and Jacobi were seeded 1-2 in the 800, and that is the way they finished.
“I had a good race there,” Jacobi said. “I dropped three seconds off my time, and I was first for about 150 yards. I’m very proud of how I did today.”
Trinkle won the 800 and 1600 in addition to helping the relays place fist.
She said with this being a girls-only meet, she didn’t have the normal recovery time between events like she does in boy-girl meets.
“Definitely between the 1600 and the 800, it’s a lot less recovery time,” she said. “At conference last week, I kind of got used to it. Tonight, I was just coming in focused on staying strong and breathing out my nose and keeping a good, strong pace. PR’d in the 1600 by two seconds, and I PR’d in the 800 by two seconds.”
Harpe said, “Holding the trophy is awesome. From my freshman year to how we come out now, I’m glad how much we’ve improved and not just in one event. Every person had the race of their lives. All around, it was a great meet.
“I got a two-second PR in the 400. We’ve got to work really hard this week, especially in our relays, if we want to have a shot of going to state. We’ve got to cut a few seconds off our 4×8 relay and cut time off our 4×4 relay.”
Lara Skaggs also won two events for the Owls, the 100 hurdles and the pole vault.
She fell coming over the fifth hurdle.
“I felt so good coming out of the blocks, and then I stumbled at the fourth or fifth hurdle and I went down hard,” Skaggs said. “I think I clipped the hurdle with my lead leg. Somehow, I came out of it and won. I think if I would have ran the whole way like I did the start, I would have gotten a PR. I cleared 8-feet in the pole vault, and then I scratched out because nobody else cleared 8.”
Sunbury said, “We felt like we were getting closer and closer there for a few years. What we went through all year it feels great and the girls hanging in there this year. I know a lot of programs had trouble getting girls back out to run. Our girls came out and they’ve worked hard. We hung in there, and we had a lot of PRs. It’s tough to get to this point and have PRs.”
Another big scorer for the owls was Hannah Dart, who was second in the discus and third in the shot put.
The top three finishers in each event advance to the Bloomington North Regional on May 25.