Pawhuska High School track teams prep for regionals

With regional competition slated Saturday in Okemah and a meet at Covington-Douglas earlier this week in place of conference competition, Pawhuska High School track-and-field coach Mark Frye decided his teams needed to get well rather than running last Saturday, as scheduled, at Luther.

The Huskies had just run April 19, at Catoosa, in a performance that Frye said “wasn’t a real good showing for us overall.” Had Pawhuska gone to Luther, that would have meant three meets in five days — probably too much of a load right before regionals.

Even though Frye characterized the Catoosa meet as “brutally tough,” there were bright spots for the Huskies during that competition. For instance, the girls 4X200-meter relay squad finished first, with a time of 1:49.22. They edged Porter Consolidated, which came in second with a time of 1:49.43.

The Pawhuska girls finished fifth in the 4X100-meter relay with a time of 52.44, and the Pawhuska boys finished fifth in the 4X200, with a time of 1:34.43.

In other action at Catoosa, Pawhuska’s Kyleigh Riebel finished fifth in the girls 300-meter hurdles, with a time of 49.68. Also among the girls, Ashley Henley finished fifth in the shot put, and Aubrie Walker was seventh in the pole vault.

Among the Pawhuska boys, Brian Jeffers ran a time of 23.36 seconds in the preliminaries, finishing fourth in that round. In the finals, he ran a 23.84 to take seventh.

Evan Frye finished fifth in the boys 400 meters, with a time of 53.17, and the Pawhuska boys finished sixth in the 4X400-meter relay with a time of 3:43. Tre Harper finished third in the boys pole vault.

Coach Frye hopes his athletes are in their best form by the time of regional and state competitions, and he’s encouraged that his relay boys are running times similar to those posted by young men who were seniors a year ago and graduated.

But he has no illusions about anything being easy in Oklahoma 2A track and field.

“We have 96 schools in our class,” Frye said, adding that people underestimate “how dadgum tough it is” in 2A.