Joseph’s Iona McDonald, center, placed seventh in both the girls 1,500 and girls 3,000 Saturday, May 22, 2021, at the 1A state track meet in La Grande.

JOSEPH — Joseph head track coach John Roberts already has seen his team in a meet this season, and was pleased with the effort in the March 18 Mullen Leavitt Invite at The Dalles.

“All I wanted was some marks out of them so we can build off that,” he said. “We have a lot of new kids. (We) wanted them to get familiar with track and field and have an easy time of it. Pretty low-key meet. We did about what we expected we would do.”

The Eagles have more than 25 athletes on the team this spring, about 10 more than Roberts expected. That count includes a tripling of the number of girls from a year ago, when he had just three. He also has about 17 on the boys side.

Two of the boys who performed well at The Dalles, and for whom Roberts has high hopes, are Reece Nelson and Kale Ferguson. Each won two events — Nelson taking the high jump and triple jump, and Ferguson the discus and javelin throws.

“Those two should easily go to state, if not in first place in their events,” Roberts said. “Reece already jumped higher (when he cleared 6 feet) than the qualifying mark for state. It was a pretty easy jump. Kale, we’re just working on mechanics. I don’t want him throwing too hard. Toward the week of predistrict we might be hitting top marks.”

The Eagles also should be strong in the distance races, with Bayden Menton and Ian Goodrich — who both ran at the state championship cross-country meet for title-winning Wallowa Valley — leading the charge. Menton, in eighth, was the second finisher for the team back in November, and Goodrich, in 12th, was third on the team.

“I got some younger ones that might fill in and got some points” in the distance races, Roberts said.

In fact, the coach is optimistic of the possibility of having competitors in almost every event on the boys side, with the exception being pole vault.

“We’ll cover just about all the field events,” he said.

The coach answered in the affirmative when asked if he sees comparisons between this boys squad and the 2019 team that took second in the 1A state meet.

“I think maybe we’ll cover more events with this team, depending on how high up the ladder we go,” he said.

On the girls side, there will be a major learning curve with several of the athletes out new to the sport.

“I think we got 10 girls, and quite a few of them haven’t done track,” Roberts said. “It’ll be a building thing for them. The couple that have (experience), we have some hopes there in the hurdles and running, and possibly a couple in the jumps.”

With so many newcomers to the track, Roberts said a lot goes into trying to place athletes in the right event.

“It’s just a combination of things,” he said. “You can watch their form running (and) how they breathe (to place them in running events). We try them in all the jumps to see if they have any springs or not, if they don’t, you move them to another event. … Some will find an event right off the bat, and some don’t.”

One he knows will be in the mix this spring is Iona McDonald, who on March 18 claimed the top spot in the 300-meter hurdles and was sixth in the 1,500.

“She’s a tough girl. We’ll be putting a lot of workouts on her,” Roberts said.

The Eagles return to the track April 1 at the Carnival of Speed in Milton-Freewater. While they don’t host a meet this spring, they will be in plenty of regional events, including three in Union County and two in Baker County. The latter of those is the 1A Special District 4 meet in Baker City May 13.

The state track meet is at the new Hayward Field in Eugene on May 19-20.