Rocky athletes shine at home meet

Rocky Mountain hosted 12 teams Saturday at its home track meet, with head coach and athletic director Tobee Christiansen saying the day was both rewarding and challenging.

As meet director, Christiansen said much of his attention was on keeping the meet running, not watching his own athletes compete.

“The hard part is not seeing your kids compete,” Christiansen said. “I told my kids, I get to be surprised like anybody else when I look over the results, because I didn’t get to see any of it happen.”

Christiansen said the meet also showed the strength of the school and community. After schedule changes left him short of help Friday morning, volunteers stepped in to make the meet possible.

“As of Friday morning, I was 17 people short of running the track meet,” he said. “Just how awesome people are to jump in and help out and make sure the kids have a quality event. That says a lot about people in our school and in our community.”

Christiansen said about 40 volunteers helped run the meet.

“You can’t do it without people that are there for kids,” he said.

The meet drew teams from Arapahoe Charter, Burlington, Greybull, Lander, Lovell, Meeteetse, Powell, Riverside, Rocky Mountain, Shoshoni, Ten Sleep and Worland.

On the girls side, Avery Thomas led the way with three top-10 finishes. She placed ninth in the 100 meters in 14.17 seconds, sixth in the long jump at 14-11 and sixth in the triple jump at 33-3.

“She’s got a great work ethic and is just a positive kid, positive with other people and in the workouts,” Christiansen said.

Sawyer Bassett also reached a pre-qualifying mark in the triple jump, placing eighth at 32-9. Keylee Christiansen cleared 7-6 to place second in the pole vault and also pre-qualified. Layla Gardner was fourth in the pole vault at 7-0.

The girls sprint medley relay team of Thomas, Gardner, Bailey Gifford and Leah Haslem placed third in 5:02.86. Haslem also placed fifth in the 1,600 meters in 6:40.45, while Evynn Alvarez was eighth in 7:26.69 and Ellie Alvarez ninth in 7:47.65.

For the boys, Mason Moss had a strong day, placing second in the 400 meters in 52.84 seconds and fifth in the high jump at 5-9. Christiansen said Moss was high jumping for the first time in a couple of years and is still working on form.

The boys 4x100 relay team of Jaxx May, Moss, Cooper Ward and Will Watts placed third in 45.43 seconds.

Ward added a sixth-place finish in the long jump at 17-4.

“Cooper keeps surprising me,” Christiansen said. “His sprinting times are coming down, and his jumps are going up. He’s gotten a lot stronger and faster this year.”

Rowan Hanusa cleared 9-0 to place sixth in the pole vault. Christiansen said the pole vaulters continue to make progress under assistant coach Aric Hanusa.

“He does a good job of working with those kids and moving them along,” Christiansen said. “They’re all advancing.”

Rocky’s boys throwers also had a strong showing. Evin Clendenen placed ninth in the discus at 120-5 1/2, followed by Kellan Jackson in 10th at 115-1. Cooper Winland placed seventh in the shot put at 40-0.

Christiansen said the throwers have created good competition among themselves.

“There’s a bunch of them, and it’s fun,” he said. “They have good friendly competition between themselves.”

This Saturday, the Grizzly track team will make the short trip to Lovell to take part in the Lovell Invitational.