George Ferguson
Havre Daily News sports editor
gferguson@havredailynews.com
Today in Glasgow, high school track and field athletes will get an opportunity to showcase their talents head-to-head against the regions best when the annual Northeast Top Ten meet is held at 3 p.m. at the Glasgow High School track.
The Havre Blue Ponies, the only Class A team at the meet have a host of athletes headed to Glasgow today. But because of Havre's rigorous schedule in which the Ponies competed in four full-scale track meets in six days, all coming away from Havre, HHS head coach Mark West is holding back a little today.
“We will have kids who qualified for the Top 10 in more than one event that won't compete in all of the events they qualified in,” West said. “We have pretty tired legs and we are battling some fatigue right now so we definitely don't want to get anybody hurt.
“This is one of the goals that all of our kids shoot for every year,” West added. “Making it to this meet is a big deal to these kids and they want to go out and perform well. So I have no doubt that our kids will go down there and compete very hard.
The Havre High girls team will be sending 12 athletes into today's meet led by Carmen Neuens, Casea Pollington and Lena Suek. Neuens will compete in the long jump and the high jump and Pollington will join her as one of the favorites in the high jump. Pollington and Neuens have battled back and forth in that event this season and Pollington's mark of 5-3 in the Havre Invitational is the second best jump of the season in girls track and field in Montana.
Suek has been nothing short of dominant in the her junior campaign. She will compete in the discus, shot put and javelin today, and she has top 10 marks in Montana in both the javelin and discus.
Sophomore Hanna Wells will run both the 100-meter and 300-meter hurdles for the Ponies and senior Kelsey West will run the 100-meters and be joined by teammates Mandy Nystrom, Trish Samson and Cammie West on both relay teams. Nystrom will also run the 400 meters.
Havre also has a host of distance runners who qualified for today's meet. Freshman Sarah Blessum will run the 1600 meters and sophomore Jaleesa Barthel will compete int he 800 meters. Meridith Hanson and Amanda Hedstrom will both run in the grueling 3200-meter race.
On the boys side Havre will also be well represented today, especially in the running events. Havre's strong sprinting contingent will feature Derek Verploegen in the 100 and 400-meter races as well as both relays. Sophomore Kyle Finneman will run the 100 meters and both relays and Kyle Rummel will run the 200 meters as well as the relays. Senior Tristan Welter rounds out the HHS relay teams.
In the distances, Havre will showcase the talents of Robert Brooks, who has won multiple 1600-meter and 3200-meter gold medals this season. Andy Keim will run the 800 meters and Marcus Campbell will join Brooks int he 3200-meter race. Jason Mudrow will round out the running events for Havre by competing in the 110 and 300-meter hurdles.
In the field events, the Ponies qualified Ryan Horne in the high jump, Paul Jensen in the discus and Cody McLean in the pole vault.
The Top Ten meet gets under way at 3 p.m. in Glasgow. The full Havre High boys and girls teams will be back in action on Saturday in Lewistown.
