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MARQUETTE — It’s regionals week in high school track and field and all six Marquette County teams got a tune-up at the Marquette County Meet held at Marquette Senior High School on Monday afternoon.

Marquette claimed both team titles scoring 158 points for the boys and 133 2/3 points for the girls.

Negaunee was runner-up on the boys side with a 78 1/2, followed by Westwood with 67 1/2, Ishpeming 44, Republic-Michigamme 4 and Gwinn 1.

Negaunee’s Clara Johnson races in the girls 3,200-meter relay during the Marquette County meet Monday afternoon at Marquette Senior High School. (Journal photo by Corey Kelly)

The Miners were also second in the girls meet with 112 1/3, followed by Ishpeming with 47 and Gwinn and Westwood in a tie with 30.

MSHS boys head coach Kyle Detmers said a compressed schedule has forced his team to play a safe strategy, trying to avoid injuries while also preparing for the MHSAA Upper Peninsula Division 1 regional meet on Friday.

“We just wanted to get them healthy,” he said about his athletes. “This was the fourth meet in eight days so it’s just brutal. I’m just really happy with the guys. You’ve got to compete but you don’t want anybody to get hurt.

“We had some personal bests today, my throwers did very well, my jumpers and sprinters are coming along, so I’m happy with where we’re at.”

MSHS girls head coach Natalie Messano said it takes her entire team to compete when trying to scale back and still prepare for regionals.

“We ran a lot of our girls in just three events,” she said. “We pulled them back a little bit. We raced Thursday, Saturday and today, so that’s a lot of racing to get in before the regional.

“So we pulled back a litte bit but had some really nice times and right before regionals that’s what you like to see. It’s a full team effort. We’re scoring points in the field events, we’ve got some distance runners and sprinters scoring points and our relays are doing really well, too.”

The Marquette boys took 11 of 17 events contested while the girls claimed eight.

The Redettes won three of the four relays and added in two podium sweeps. One sweep came in the 400-meter dash with Delaney Sall taking first place in 1 minute, 1.56 seconds followed by Rachael Hunt and Clarissa Remillard. The other podium sweep came in the 200 with Spenser Waite crossing the line first in 26.60 seconds followed by Hunt and Remillard once again.

The Redmen claimed all four relays and also had a podium sweep in the 300 hurdles with Jonas Blum winning that event in 41.38 followed by teammates Drew Thomas and Truman Langlois.

Another notable result for the Redmen was in the 3,200 with Garrett Rudden coming in first place in 10:28.97 and teammate Garrett Zueger next in 10:38.02.

The Negaunee girls were led by Chloe Norman and Emily Paupore. Norman won four events while Paupore took home three, including the 3,200 in 11:33.07, almost two minutes ahead of teammate Talon Prusi.

Prusi said she was pleased with her 13:17.0.

“I think I did amazing personally,” she said. “To perform those times that I had, even though they weren’t my fastest times, to do that (today) was really cool.”

The Miners also saw a victory in the 3,200 relay with Norman, Paupore, Piper Symons and Clara Johnson in 10:07.88.

Negaunee girls head coach Vickie Paupore said the strategy for her team was to taper down before regionals.

“In regionals we’re going to have to give it all we can,” she said. “We’ve been holding back and have been a little conservative with particularly my distance runners and not running them in all four events.

“But at regionals that’s all you’ve got. So at regionals we’re going to put our girls in all of the events they can handle and try to load it up to get as many qualifiers as we can through for U.P. finals.”

Paupore also credited the leadership of Negaunee’s 11 seniors.

“I have an amazing group of seniors,” she said.

“They work so hard and they’re such good role models. We’re having a successful season largely due to our senior leadership. I’m proud of not just their performances but their leadership abilities as well.”

The Miners boys were led by standout Colton Yesney, who won both the 800 in 2:01.56 and 1,600 in 4:28.44. Teammate Drew DuShane added a victory in the 200 in 23.74.

Negaunee boys coach Kevin Bell said he saw aspects of improvement on various smaller things Monday.

“Our strategy (today) was to keep everybody healthy and try to improve on little things,” he said.

“Things like our relays, technique on the shot put and discus, some of our distance runners we backed off a little bit to give them a little bit of rest time but we saw some good performances (today).

“Our hurdlers did good, I was happy with Colton Yesney today on his two races as well.”

For the Hematites, Coulton Prillwitz won the long jump with a leap of 18 feet, 8 inches, just outjumping Westwood’s Ethan Burke who had 18-6.50.

Katie Loman also took a victory for Ishpeming in the 100 hurdles in 17.09.

Ishpeming head coach PJ Pruett said muscle aches forced both his boys and girls teams to take it easy before Friday’s regionals.

“We had a couple of kids with some sore muscles,” he said. “We had to cut some of their events down, rest them for the week and we’ll run them hard on Friday. I’m going to rest them up and we’re going to go in there and get through as many kids as we can possibly get.”

For Westwood, Ethan Burke won the 400 in 53.39, while Rocco Carlson and Mason Mariuzza went 1-2 in the pole vault. The Patriots also had numerous podium finishes for both boys and girls.

Westwood boys head coach Scott Syrjala said he’s proud of his team’s effort as the season progresses.

“We did a little bit here and there, but I told our kids this is our last chance to try and get a good regional time for seeding,” he said.

“I’m really proud of our kids. A lot of them responded really well, we had some PRs (personal records) and some breakthrough moments for our kids.

“We’re continuing on with this short season like this and you just hope that they get better in that short amount of time and so far our kids are doing that.”

Westwood relay runner Taylor Dellangelo said the strategy going into regionals is a simple one.

“We just need to continue to do what we do,” he said. “We need to run fast and that’s basically the strategy.”

The Gwinn girls had two victories in field events. Marissa Delmont won the shot put with a heave of 33-11.

Teammate Brenna Bruce took second place in the shot put and also won the discus with a throw of 97-1.50.

Negaunee and Westwood go to a U.P. Division 1 regional at 3:30 p.m. Thursday in Negaunee, while Marquette hosts a Divison 1 meet on Friday at the same time.

Ishpeming and Gwinn go to the Division 2 regional in Manistique at 4 p.m. Friday, while Republic-Michigamme will be at the Divison 3 meet in Munising.

The top four in each event at the regionals advance to U.P. Finals, except for Division 3 relays, where the top two advance.

Email Ryan Spitza at sports@miningjournal.net.

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