On Friday evening, in a less than 24-hour change of locations for the Class B1 outdoor track sectional competition, the Batavia Girls finished first place by a large margin, with 172 points.
Batavia Boys were edged by U-Prep by 2.5 points in the last race to take second place.
The event was moved at the last minute to Van Detta Stadium because of a fire at the Newark High School facility, the originally scheduled host of the event. There was an electrical fire late Thursday afternoon in Newark.
Girls head coach Rich Boyce said, "I am extremely proud of this accomplishment tonight. The girls worked really hard all season. We knew we would have to have the best meet of our lives to beat HFL, and they came here today, and every single girl on this team got a PR in every event they did."
"We knew it would come down to us and HFL," Boyce said. "172 points today was just amazing by our team, which to my recollection, is the most points Batavia girls outdoor track team have scored in a sectional meet. We will celebrate this one tonight and be back to work for state qualifiers next week."
Assistant Coach Bill Buckenmeyer said, "It was an outstanding effort to a change in scenery in one day and come out on their home track and put out the performance that they did. I thought it was amazing. The boys had a great meet, too. It just shows the true meaning of being a Blue Devil to go out there, up against tough competition and perform at the highest level."
Winners for Batavia include Nate Canale in the 1600m (4:29.44) and in the 800m (1:59.41). Cody Harloff won the 3000 Steeple (10:21.67), and the boy's 4x800 Relay squad won (9:06.29).
Relay runners for the winning 4x8 were Noah Pickard, Gavin Fowler, Donavin Solis, and Ryan Dillon.
Sheldon Siverling continued his impressive spring with a victory in the Shot Put (54-3) and a 2nd place finish in Discus (136-3). Lucas Crater won the individual sectional championship in the Pentathlon (2578 points) as well.
The team finished with 142.5 points, while Uprep scored 145.
"This meet was a very gutsy performance from many of our athletes, and the Blue Devils competed hard all meet long," said Boys Coach Nick Burk. "The meet was hosted by Batavia, so all of our seniors got to have one more chance to run on the home track against the top competition. We also had a very balanced meet, getting contributions in many events throughout the course of the day. Despite the bittersweet ending to sectionals, our athletes left it all on the track and competed until the end."
Full results can be found at: https://live.yentiming.com/meets/781/events
Batavia will host the State Qualifier meet this Friday at Vandetta Stadium at 4:45 p.m.
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Photos by Steve Ognibene
