After cancellations and a cold and rainy start to spring, the Mound Westonka High School track and field team had a perfect day May 5 for a competitive six-team meet in Delano. Sunny skies and little-to-no wind set the stage for numerous exciting personal best results.

Notable performances on the White Hawks boys team came from the middle-distance running crew. Seniors Lance Nemecek and Josh Engesser had personal bests in the 1600M (mile) with a second place 4:40 and third place 4:52, respectively. Those performances place Nemecek and Engesser third and eighth in section rankings.

Moments later, the track really heated up with sophomore Jack Markstrom and Nemecek in a highly contested 800M. At the starter’s pistol, Nemecek and a Becker runner sprinted the two-lap race shoulder-to-shoulder, sharing the lead, with Markstrom in contention.  With a dash to the finish, both Nemecek and Markstrom walked away with personal best finishes of 2:00 and 2:05, earning them second and third places, respectively.  Nemecek’s time places him sixth in all MSHL Class AA and first in the section.

Junior Samuel Dioszeghy had a pair of second-place PR finishes in the discus and shot put with a 143’04” and 44’09”. Junior Payton Kasper earned second place with a 13’06” in the pole vault, as did junior Dimitri Anderson in the triple jump with a 40’02’.

The strength of the White Hawks girls team was evident with PR performances in the 100M, with first- and second-place finishes for speedsters ninth-grader Avery Olson 13:32 and senior Bella Lund 13:33. The list of PRs continued with junior Micah Boyce in second place with a 26.96 in the 200M, senior Alison Soule in second place with a 1:02 in the 400M, and ninth-grader Audrey Kirscht in third place with a 2:34 in the 800M. Rounding off the list of top finishers was junior Laura Sunnaborg with a second place 5:43 in the 1600M.

The girls team delivered a relay clinic, as the returning conference champion 4x200 team of Boyce, sophomore Makenna Seitz, junior Abby Hollenstein and Soule took first with a 1:50. Not to be outdone, their 4x100 counterparts also took top honors with a 51:37 from Lund, Olson, senior Kennedy Schmidt and Boyce.