Aggies dominate home meet

By T.J. ALLICK, Staff Writer tallick@minotdailynews.com
Monday’s Velva Track and Field Meet was the last meet of the regular season for the vast majority of competitors. And, for the V-D seniors it was a final chance to do well in front of their home crowd.


V-D made the most of it by dominating the girls side and finishing a close second in the boys portion. In a combined effort, the Aggies girls scored 200 team points, which was 110 better than second place finisher Kenmare-Mohall-Lansford-Sherwood-Bowbells.


“I thought our seniors all had a really good last meet here,” V-D head girls coach David Peterson said. “I know for Cassandra Anderson, Dakota Anderson and Courtney Thingstad, this was there last home meet, so I thought they all had really good days.”


Eight of the 19 events were won by the V-D girls, including a sweep of the sprinting events. Thingstad earned wins in the 100 and 400, Dakota Anderson won the 100 and 300 hurdles and Anna Knutson won the 200. Also, the Aggies took the top 3 places in both the 100 and 200.


“Our sprinters did really well in the 100 and 200 today,” Peterson said. “We entered quite a few girls in the opens and we have a lot of competition out there, so they all definitely have plenty of incentive to run well this time of year.”


Brittany Berndt (long jump), and Jamie Effertz (triple jump) also earned wins for V-D, which also won the 400 and 1,600 relay.


Peterson was extremely pleased with the effort put forth by the 400 relay team of Knutson, Berndt, Brittney Thingstad and Courtney Thingstad. The team won the event with a time of 50.74 seconds.


“I know in girls, we were hoping to improve on our 400 relay time and we were able to accomplish that, so we were pretty happy with that,” he said. “We were hoping to get a few more qualified, but that didn’t happen.


It was typical meet, some things were good, some were bad, but overall we have to be pleased with the day.”


Des Lacs-Burlington head coach Wade Wilson’s motto is to stay steady and place in the top 5 in as many events as possible. Wilson, who coaches both boys and girls, saw his boys earn the first team title of the season following his mantra.


The Lakers took five individual events, earned 14 top 5 finishes overall, and won the event with a team score of 201, which was just one better than V-D (200) in second.


“That’s what we usually like to do is to place in the top 5, and I think our kids are performing to the best of their abilities right now,” Wilson said. “Right now we mainly use the meets for conditioning at this point. We just hope they do their best, and that’s what’s happening right now.”


Cale Aberle (pole vault), Chris Price (long jump) and Shay Packulak (high jump, triple jump, 400) all earned wins for DL-B. While his upper classmen did a solid job leading the way, Wilson praised the effort of his younger group.


“Having our young kids, freshman and sophomores, picking up those third, fourth, fifth places — those are the guys that help you,” he said. “You need young people on your team. I give those guys a lot of credit because they come here as freshman and sophomores and compete against juniors and seniors, so they deserve a lot of credit.”