Contributor: The Nerd
And then there were seven
On Friday night Stella Miner of Omaha Westside ran a 2:09.77 at Omaha Benson to break her own Class A state record of 2:10.16 that she set in 2022. That marks the seventh Class or All-Class record set this year, and it's Stella's second record of the season. Nauj Nerd was on hand and created this short clip of her record. To recap the other six records:
* On March 16, Reece Grosserode of Lincoln Pius broke his own Class A triple jump record of 49-00.5 from the 2022 State meet with a 49-08 leap at the Doane indoor meet. While it's an indoor effort, we wrote in detail in our March 27 Nerdsletter that the all-Class long jump record mark has also been an indoor mark since at least 1961. The NSAA has yet to ratify the 49-08 mark.
* Karsyn Leeling of Sidney broke the all-Class high jump on March 22 at her home meet, jumping 6-00 to break the record previously held by Meredy Porter of Bellevue West, who jumped 05-11 in 1987. Karsyn had previously co-held the Class B record of 5-10 with Sue Lind of Albion (1980 & 1981) and Kailynn Gubbels of Arlington (2021).
* Karsyn broke that record on April 4 at Mitchell, jumping 6-01. The NSAA list of records does not reflect either the 6-00 or 6-01 marks.
* On March 28 Juan Gonzalez of Fremont ran a 8:51.46 3200 at Columbus to break the previous record of 8:54.12 set by Seth Hirsch of Millard West in 2017. Juan's time is reflected as a State record on the NSAA website at https://secure.nsaahome.org/nsaaforms/tr/staterecords.php.
* Also on March 28, Braden Lofquest of Gretna East ran a 4:16.16 1600 at the Bellevue East meet to break the Class B record of 4:16.62 set by Steve Doran of GICC at the 1981 State meet.
* On March 30 Stella Miner set the all-Class 1600 record with a 4:47.49 to break Elizabeth Lange's (Pius) record of 4:49.3 from 2003. That mark is not yet on the NSAA website. Nauj Nerd posted a video of that race on our YouTube channel.
Will there be more records?
Definitely. We've got our eyes on:
- The Class A girls 3200 record of 10:23 set by Emily Sisson in 2008 seems impossible to reach, but there is at least one Nebraska girl capable of threatening it. Claire White ran a solo 10:49 on March 30 on tired legs. What's possible on a good day? Similarly, Kassidy Stuckey of York ran 10:56 last Friday one week after running a 10:57. The Class B record is 10:27 - a stretch - but Stuckey keeps improving.
- The Class A girls 4x800 record of 9:12.7 was set by Lincoln East in 2018 while Elkhorn North set the Class B girls record of 9:27.97 last year. Westside has three girls who can run between 2:09 and 2:17; if they find a fourth girl who can run 2:25-2:30, they have a chance. Meanwhile, Elkhorn North and Norris are stacked with mid-distance excellence.
- The Class B girls discus record of 165-00 set by Emily Duran of Nebraska City in 2000 is under serious threat from Madison Smith of Gothenburg, who threw 155-6 on Friday.
- I don't think we can rule out another high jump record by Karsyn Leeling. On both days when she broke the record, she had good attempts at the next height.
- The Class A and B boys 1600 record, with Juan Gonzalez, Jack Witte, Max Myers, Denny Chapman and others hunting down the Class A 4:09.84 mark set by Milo Greder, while Braden Lofquest and Riley Boonstra challenge Lofquest's 4:15.16 in Class B.
- The Class A 3200 record was set on March 28, giving Juan Gonzalez plenty of time to take another shot this season or next. Will he?
- The Class B 3200 record of 9:12.90 by Auburn legend Bryan Clark is within striking distance of Lofquest, Boonstra and Hastings' Austin Carrera.
- The Class B shot put record of 66-11.5 was set by Marty Kobza of Schuyler in 1981. Sam Thomas of Elkhorn North was putting outfield spectators (including Nerd Convert) in danger on Friday at Waverly with his 64-05 heave.
- Brandon Benson set the Class D pole vault record of 15-04.75 in 2012. Roe Patterson of Fullerton jumped 15-00 on March 19.
- Reece Grosserode seems likely to triple jump further than 49-08, which would break the State record that the NSAA has yet to certify.
Top marks
Thanks to the programming brilliance of GIHS alum Emma Smith (see last week's Nerdsletter), our all-Class and by-Class top 15 rankings are now live. With all due respect to the LJS and OWH lists, we believe our rankings are more complete and more frequently updated than the weekly or bi-weekly lists issued by the newspapers. To our knowledge, we're the only entity that tries to track down and share results for every Nebraska high school meet; we do that at https://www.preprunningnerd.com/trackresults.
On our rankings page at https://www.preprunningnerd.com/rankings, click on the 'Rankings spreadsheet' under 2024 Track to see our latest rankings. Every few days we pull in online results and Nerd the Third manually inputs the meet results that aren't online. As of April 8, here's what our rankings don't reflect:
a. Any non-online meet results held after March 30. We run 4-7 days behind on manual results.
b. Any athletic.live results that have yet to be posted to athletic.net. For example, as of April 8 the Lincoln Southwest results from April 2nd and the Lincoln Northwest results from April 4th had not been posted to athletic.net. Results from the 'Live' website don't feed into our rankings or the athletic.net rankings.
If you believe your mark has been overlooked, send a DM through Twitter, FB or Insta telling us the athlete name, the meet, the date, the event and the mark. We'll research the omission.
Odds and ends
* Tony Chapman, who co-founded Harvest Sports and also goes by Nerd Convert, raised an interesting question on Twitter about whether the State qualification system should rest solely on District performances or also issue some spots for in-season excellence. One coach indicated that a hybrid system was almost approved in Class A about five years ago but it was scuttled at a final vote. The NCAA awards regional (outdoor) or nationals (indoors) spots based on the best in-season marks; some people like it and some people argue that a coveted indoor berth for a March national meet shouldn't be awarded based on one good result in early December. Anyway, it's a good question. I don't know if there's one good answer.
* I feel like I'm a big running nerd but I had never heard of the Nebraska-based podcast "Chasing Three Hours" that interviews post-collegiate and never-collegiate runners about their running lives. The long-form podcasts hosted by Josh Peterson include subjects like Derek Loseke and Ben Randall, whom I featured in our winter Nerdsletters, and former Nebraska prep and collegiate standouts Seth Hirsch and Taylor Somers. I listened to the most recent podcast, an interview with Eli Vedral, during my long run yesterday and I really enjoyed it. The podcast is available on Spotify, Apple and several other platforms.
* We do this as a hobby so I'll be honest that I have a pretty low bar for blocking followers or deleting rude comments on social media. If you're a faux account trolling an athlete from another school, if you make rude remarks on our posts, or if you let us know you don't appreciate our take... well, we'd rather spend our time creating new content instead of arguing on social media. We cast a wide net - junior high, high school, college, Class A through D, fast, slow, talented, challenged - but we know we're not everyone's cup of tea. Our sense of humor may not match yours. That's ok. If you don't like what we do, we encourage you to follow another Nebraska high school T&F account that you do like.
The next Nerdsletter?
Nerd Senior has some commitments next week that will prevent him from publishing a Nerdsletter. Will Nerd the Third decide to take a break from studying for high-level accounting classes to write an abbreviated Nerdsletter? We'll find out next week.
Photos
Where were Nerds last week? It might be easier to answer where they weren't. We identified 38 high school and collegiate meets last week involving Nebraska schools, and the Nerds were able to attend 15 high school meets, 1 college meet and a bonus junior high meet at Dundy County Stratton. That total of 17 doesn't even include Nauj Nerd's brief appearance at Omaha Benson to document Stella Miner's record run. We've already posted photos for 15 meets on our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/PrepRunningNerd/photos. With so many albums posted it may difficult for you to find your meet, so we've also updated our webpage here to list all the meets we've shot since January 1st. With 55 meets already on the books, it's a long list.
We have yet to post the Millard South meet and the Chappell Tri-State boys photos from last week but they're on their way.
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First published at www.preprunningnerd.com by Jay Slagle on April 10, 2024. If you find an error, shoot us an e-mail at jayslagle@hotmail.com and we'll get it fixed.
Like this coverage of the Nebraska track and field scene? There's more of this at www.preprunningnerd.com. Check out the Blog tab for our frequent stories and and the Results tab for every Nebraska high school race we can find. If you want to see meet photos or just need to kill a few hours on social media, follow us on Twitter and Instagram @PrepRunningNerd or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/preprunningnerd.
Finally, if you think runners, jumpers and throwers are the best things on earth, you'll enjoy our two most popular articles. In 2018 we published "The Runner with the Broken Heart" about a high school boy who finished last in nearly every race he ran. In 2022 we published, "The Fall and Rise of Emmett Hassenstab," a story about a high school triple jumper who became a quadrapalegic after a swimming accident.