OREGON 1A GIRLS
Nogle, Funkhouser lead Sherman to title
Sherman won the girls’ 1A team title with 111 points, well ahead of Crane (64), and repeating as state champions. (Sherman HS is in Moro, in Sherman County, nearly 2,000 feet in altitude, near The Dalles on the Columbia River in north central Oregon.)
Bailey Nogle, a senior, and Emily Funkhouser, #732 at left, a junior, were everywhere, although Emily was upset in her bid to repeat as 400 champion.
Nogle won the 100, 200 and high jump and placed 3rd in the long jump. Funkhouser swept the hurdles and broke the existing meet records in both the 400 and 800 – yet didn’t win either race.
400 On Friday, when the daytime high here in the Willamette Valley was a record 98 degrees, Funkhouser won Heat I in 59.25 to break the MR of 59.54, set in 2003 by Emily Peterson of Umpqua Valley Christian. (Earlier this spring, Emily served notice by running 58.99 to break the 28-year-old all-time 1A record of 59.0, set in 1980 by Margaret Doherty of Ione.)
Sophomore September O’Crowley of Crane won Heat II in a pedestrian 63.80, but O’Crowley had set the 1A freshman record in ’07 at 60.47 and had a seasonal best of 59.63, so she deserved watching.
And there was also Sarah Hanchett of McKenzie, the 2006 state champion, who had run 59.0 this season.
In a dramatic final on Saturday afternoon – with temps merely in the high 80s, still unusually warm for the west side in mid-May – O’Crowley ran down both of them in the final straightaway. “I was so tired when I came out of the blocks,” O’Crowley told Lindsay Schnell of The Oregonian. “But at the corner I thought, ‘This is my last race’ and just went for it.”
She ran 58.69, in one fell sweep taking two records away from Funkhouser – meet record, 1A all-time best. Funkhouser was 2nd in 59.14, Hanchett 3rd in 60.43.
Actually, they all plenty of other running to do before the day was over.
(September gets our vote for name of the meet as well.)
800 Funkhouser exceeded another MR, and again didn’t get to the top of the awards stand. In the 8, Hanchett repeated as state champion, running 2:21.71 to break the meet record of 2:22.34 set in 2005 by Abby Morrison of Pine Eagle. (Sarah ran 2:18.2 earlier this season.)
Funkhouser was also under the old record, with 2:22.07.
Emily also swept the hurdles, 16.01 in the 100H, 45.65 in the 300H, the latter 2nd all-time in 1A history to the 45.64 by Nikki McElligott of Ione in the 1999 state final.
(In an odd turn of events, Funkhouser also managed to keep ahold of two 4x4 records she is a part of. In 2007, she anchored Sherman’s winning team in 4:09.96. Crane won here this year, but in 4:11.09 – O’Crowley anchoring in 58.8 – finishing 1st, but falling short of the MR. In 2A – Sherman’s former division – St. Mary’s-Medford broke the meet record with 4:06.86, but Sherman’s all-time state 2A record of 4:05.71 from 2006 held up. Emily Funkhouser and her sister Erin ran the last two legs for that team.)
In addition to the 4 and 8, Sarah Hanchett also won the 3k here, running 10:48.59. Her teammate at McKenzie, Teresa Tores, won the javelin at 133-9, a meet record and all-time 1A record (with the new implement).
And, before you think Hanchett showed range with a 400/800/3K triple, there’s also Rachael Estabrook of Triad. She won the 1,500 in 4:58.33, finished 2nd to Hanchett in the 3,000 – and anchored McKenzie’s runnerup 4x1 team.
The winner of the shot/disc double was Paige Branstiter of Adrian. She threw 38-5 1/2/126-4. (Is it a coincidence that the holder of the all-time 3A 400 time is Marnie Branstiter of Toledo from 1985? We could not confirm family ties.)
OREGON 1A BOYS
Lewis wins 4; Hope goes from Berlin to Adrian
Lewis wins 4; Hope goes from Berlin to Adrian
Sean Lewis, t#215, the junior at Damascus Christian, was the star of the show, running 11.40, 22.34w, 15.00 and 39.27 in the dashes and hurdles. He also won all four in 2007. On Friday in the 100 heats he ran a legal 11.19 to break his older brother Ryan’s 2005 meet record by .03. He fell short of the seasonal bests he has of 10.97, 22.27, 14.5 and 38.01. “I want to remain No. 1 in the hurdles,” Lewis told The Oregonian. “I love the hurdles.” The 38.01 is the all-time 1A best.
The 200 represented a matchup of four of the meet’s most important figures, with Lewis 1st, Maurus Hope of Adrian 2nd (22.65), Mike Madison of Echo 3rd (22.71) and Ethan Moore of Sherman 5th (23.15).
Hope, #5 below, a senior at the tiny farming community of Adrian, a few miles from the Idaho border, had already come a long way just to arrive in Adrian.
“I was born in Berlin, Germany,” Hope said. “Then we moved to Heidelberg when I was 7.
“My dad was from Atlanta, and was in the U.S. Army. He was stationed in Germany when he met my mother.” His father was an African-American named Matthew Hope. Maurus’s mother is Petra Franz. “She was from Heidelberg,” he said. “That’s why we moved there.”
Two years ago, Maurus, at 6-foot-2 and 160 pounds an athletic-looking young man, applied to be an exchange student in the United States. He was accepted and sent to the far reaches of Eastern Oregon, so far east, in Malheur County, that it is in the Mountain time zone, not far from Nampa, Idaho.
“I stayed with a family, the Ishidas. They own a farm, where they grow onions and potatoes. I worked on the farm every day, along with their sons, Blake and Mark, who are good friends of mine.”
Maurus, who had no background as a runner, also decided to join the track team. “Then my dad passed away,” he said. “He died in the spring in Germany. He was really proud of me. So I decided to live in my dad’s footsteps.” Hope went to Atlanta for his father’s funeral, then returned and won the state 400 championship in 49.82, the all-time state 1A best. After returning to Germany for the summer, he applied to be an international student, and returned to Adrian for his senior year on an F-1 student visa. “I live in a dormitory, a boarding school,” he said.
Although he is currently a German citizen, Hope plans to attend an American college, apply for a green card, and continue running.
In this year’s state meet, in addition to 2nd place in the 200, Hope won the 400 in 49.86, anchored the 2nd –place 4x1 and the winning 4x4, running 49.8 on the anchor leg to pass Southwest Christian for 1st place in 3:32.13.
Southwest needed to finish 1st or 2nd in the race to get the first-place team trophy by that ½ point over Lewis’s Damascus team.
Mike Madison – 3rd in that 200 – ran down Hope in the final 100 to give Echo the win in the 4x1, 44.59-44.73. Madison, a senior, also placed 3rd in the 100 and 3rd in the 400. Echo, a small community near Pendleton, finished 3rd in the team scoring with 41 points, just 3 behind Southwest Christian.
Ethan Moore of Sherman, also a senior, was 2nd in the 100 – between Lewis and Madison – 5th in the 200 and 1st in the long and triple jumps. In the triple, he set a meet record of 44-11 ¼.
Other meet records were set by Kasey McCullough of Dufur, 54-2 ½ in the shot put and repeating as champion; Willy Johnson of Days Creek, 160-8 in the discus; Ransom Smith of Gilchrist, 14-0 in the vault, and Jacob Bowdoin of New Hope Christian (Grants Pass), who set a personal best and meet record in the 1,500 (4:05.80) to go with the MRs he already holds from 2007 in the 800 and 3,000. He also won the 3K this year, anchored the 3rd-place 4x4 and has another year left in school.
Southwest Christian was led by Ben Bogert, who finished 3rd in the 800, 2nd in the 1,500 and ran 2nd leg on that crucial 4x4 team.