Sports roundup: Oct. 5

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Girls swimming

From Coach Heather Mayfield

Last Thursday the Agate swim team competed against the Proctor-Hermantown Rails, one of the team’s toughest competitors this season. It was a very close meet all the way to the end with spectators on their feet in the stands during the last relay events.

Both junior varsity and varsity swimmers had to win their last relays in order to win the meet. The whole team knew they had to rally together and pump each other up in order to get the victory. The captains led the swimmers in cheers and also sang the school song to show their pride and determination. After a close finish in the JV relay, the varsity was able to follow suit. Both of the relays took first place and the Agates came out with the victory. They remain undefeated.

The Agates were really fired up and they wanted this win. It was, by far, one of the best meets we have had. The score was so close throughout the entire meet that every girl knew her effort mattered.

The Agates ended the week at the Taconite Invitational where they took second place behind Duluth East. There were 11 teams total and the Agates had a very strong showing.

The Agate Swim and Dive team has its final home meet of the season and parents night on Tuesday Oct. 9. They swim against Denfeld High School and hope to have a good turnout for the last meet of the season.

Two Harbors football

Junior running back Nick Johnson lead the Two Harbors offense with 53 yards rushing on four carries, and scored the Agates’ only touchdown on a 71-yard pass from sophomore quarterback Kyler Kinn in the third quarter. Junior running back Mike Nordean added 32 yards rushing on 14 carries. Defensively, senior linebacker Austyn Wasko led the Agates with 10 tackles. Senior Skylar Lysaker and junior Mark Pearson added six tackles each, with sophomores Lucas Kempffer and Calvin Luhrsen contributing five tackles each.

Cross country

From Coach April Wahlstrom

On Thursday, Sept. 27 the Cook County-Two Harbors Cross Country Team ventured over to Hibbing for the Hibbing Invitational meet. This race has earned a reputation for its flat course and typically warm temperatures. We finally had a year where the weather was great, wind was calm and the temperatures were in the 60s. In other words, it was a perfect day for a cross country race. Our runners have decided that they don’t really like this race because of how flat it is. Most teams appreciate this but our Viking runners are so tough that they prefer the hills. We try to keep their perspective fresh on this meet so they can embrace the flats and try to run fast.

Several years ago, while running at a meet in Proctor, a few of our runners found an old playground turtle (connected to a spring) in the woods. They named it Optimus Prime and decided haul it to all of the meets, turning it into their team mascot. The boys even developed a pre-race chant that allowed them to raise this turtle out of the center of their circle while they were chanting around it. Other teams (Proctor and Hibbing) admired this turtle from afar. First, Proctor stole it from the team while most of the kids were racing, then the Vikings took it back. Then Hibbing stole it. As coaches, we didn’t want this to get out of hand so we decided that it would become a traveling trophy and had to be earned. Each race at Hibbing or Cook County became an opportunity for our runners to win the turtle back. To determine the winner we would add up the top five times of the runners on each team. On Thursday, our girls beat Hibbing by two minutes and our boys lost by two seconds. All in all, it was enough to win Optimus back!

The races began with the girls’ varsity and junior varsity. We knew going into this race that this would be a good checkpoint to see how we are stacking against the competition. The girls finished a respectable fifth place with 133 points right behind South Ridge.

Sara Schield was 29th with a time of 17:18. Schield has demonstrated a strong ability to lead one of the packs—during the race she took charge of the pack with Matea Acero and Abi Seipke. Seipke fell back a bit but finish 43rd with a time of 18:15.

Our junior varsity girls’ team finished fourth place beating Hermantown and Cloquet. Ruby Walsberg finished in 20:08 for the 4-kilometer race.

Next was the boy’s race. Our junior varsity boys also ran well. Owen Cruikshank finished in 21:26 and Drew Christensen in 22:05. The team finished seventh place out of 10 teams.

Our junior high racers ran a 3-kilometer race and were fired up. Jake Paron finished 39th out of 129 racers with a time of 12:31.

On Saturday, Oct. 6, we will be in Duluth at the Swain Invitational.

Tags: sports