HHS's Rismon paces Ponies at State A meet

All season long, John Ita, the head coach of the Havre High track teams has talked about the youth and general lack of experience of the Blue Ponies. Well, this past weekend in Laurel, that inexperience was on full display as the Ponies competed hard but struggled to score points against the best track and field athletes Class A has to offer.

In the boys competition of the Class A state meet Friday and Saturday in Laurel, Havre, which finished with two points, ended up finishing 20th, well behind first-place Corvallis, which took home the Class A title with a total of 74 points. Whitefish finished a close second with 70 points and Belgrade was third with a total of 51 points.

On the girls side of things, Corvallis made it a clean sweep of state titles as the Blue Devils captured the girls meet with 102 points. Columbia Falls was second with 68 and Hamilton came in third with 59 points. A Havre team that is defined by youth failed to reach the podium in any event and scored zero points.

“The scores may not reflect it, but we had a really good state meet,” Ita said. “As a coach, I thought it was the best that we have performed at state in quite some time. We had lots of kids that had PRs (personal records), the kids competed really hard and we had a lot of kids that finished in the top-10 and a few that even finished seventh. There was just a lot of great competition.

“But when you look at the program, you saw a lot of Havre freshman and sophomores,” he added. “So as coaches we are really excited about the future and it was great for our kids to get that experience. And again, the scores do not reflect how well we went out and competed.”

The biggest bright spot over the two-day meet for HHS came Friday, when Nate Rismon, who has been the top athlete for the Havre boys all season long, capped a solid junior season with a fifth-place finish in the 400-meter dash. Rismon finished the race with a time of 51.26. He also competed in the 200, the pole vault and both the 400 and 1,600 relays for HHS.

“Nate performed really well,” Ita said. “He ran great in the 200 and 400 and in both relays for us. In a normal year, he probably would have finished pretty high in both the 200 and the 400, it was just a great field and had some great competitors.”

In addition to Rismon, the Havre boys also got solid performances from Gunnar Aageson in the pole vault and Zach Hunt in the triple jump.

“Gunnar may not have placed, but he jumped as well as he did all season long,” Ita said. “The field in the pole vault was just outstanding. Zach Hunt also did really well. He has only been doing the triple jump for a few weeks now and he finished 11th, just outside the top-10 and the finals.”

While the Havre girls did not score any points, there were still some solid performances as Rachel David was close to placing in both the 400 and 800, while Logan Huebsch did the same in the 100 and 300 hurdles. Jordan Keith, a freshman, also competed in all three throwing events for the Ponies and had a solid outing despite finishing outside the top-six in the discus, shot put and javelin.

Despite the fact that the Ponies did not light up the scoreboard, Ita and his coaching staff came away impressed with the effort from both the boys and girls teams, which he said gives good reason to be optimistic about the future.

“The field was loaded with a bunch of juniors and seniors that made it tough,” Ita said. “But we have so many young kids and performing well at state is going to give them a lot of confidence for the future. So we are really excited and already looking forward to next season.”