Bruins track record championships, PR at Spring Fling

University School of Jackson’s track program took home a couple of state championships last week during the Division II-A meet.

The 4X800 relay teams in both boys and girls track got to stand on the top of the medal stand when the champions were recognized.

“We had a really, really good week this week,” said Bruins head track coach Arthur Priddy. “To come away with the championships was great by themselves, but the entire program had a great meet.”

The girls’ championship team was made of Betha Pucek, Adi Jett, Lauren Hutchison and Julianna Schultz.

Owen Stonecipher, Miles Johnson, Hayes Carney and Abe Stonecipher were the championship runners for the boys’ team.

Priddy said figuring out which runners would run in each race for the Bruins was a difficult one decision to make because there were so many good runners on the team this year.

“We were able to use different runners in different combinations for different events throughout the season to see what really worked best,” Priddy said. “Obviously running fast is an important part of it, but winning championships in relay races involves communication for quality hand-offs and quality pacing in the longer races.

“And what helped us out as a program this year was knowing we had a lot of options for nearly everything without much dropoff from one person to the next.”

There was something else about the week that Priddy was particularly proud of coming out of the week.

“Nearly everyone on our team who competed at state set their own personal records, and many of those are school records,” Priddy said. “And many of them were already school records, so all those records just got even better.

“And on top of that, a lot of our athletes finished higher than they were seeded going into the meet.”

Priddy said one example of this was Kenley Hines, who finished third in the 300-meter hurdles and did that starting as the eighth seed.

“I couldn’t be more proud of this group,” Priddy said. “They worked hard all year, did everything we asked them to do and finished the year with some great performances.

“Yes, winning championships is the goal when you get into track and field, but for me as a coach, the main goal for each athlete is to do better than you were doing. And our team did a great job of doing that.”

Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news