Prep track: Youthful Joseph team has strength in numbers

Published 4:57 pm Monday, March 27, 2023

JOSEPH — The Joseph boys track and field team is hoping to stay near the top of the 1A ranks after placing third in 2022.

Doing so, though, will require replacing two athletes who were particularly strong a year ago, including state triple jump champion Reece Nelson, and Bayden Menton, who was runner-up in both the 1,500 and 3,000-meter runs. Nelson was also third in the high jump and triple jump, and the two accounted for 38 of Joseph’s 49 points in their individual events.

“I got a good group back, a young group, too,” head coach John Roberts said. “It’ll be hard to fill their shoes, but we got a young group coming up. It might not be in those events, but it might be in different events.”

The group Roberts has is not only young, but large. Between the boys and girls teams, there are 41 athletes out for track, according to the team’s athletic.net roster.

Among those back is Kale Ferguson, who placed fifth in both the discus and the javelin in 2022, and 1,500-meter state placer Jett Leavitt, who also paced the Wallowa Valley boys cross-country team to a fourth-place finish in the fall. Three of the four runners for the 4×100 relay team are also back, including the aforementioned Ferguson, Gavin Russell and Dylan Rogers.

“The boys sprints look good (and) the relays look good,” Roberts said.

Other athletes to keep an eye on include Jonah Lyman, who also was a key piece to the cross-country team, and Jenning Scheifelbein, who won his first 400 race at the Mullen Leavitt Invitational March 17.

“I think he’s got a lot of talent that we’re not aware of yet, and he isn’t either,” Roberts said of Scheifelbein. “I told him to run easy and relax.”

The girls team features athletes who were part of the state-title cross-country team in the fall, including Opal McDonald, who was the sixth runner for Wallowa Valley at state.

“It’s loaded with freshmen girls, and for the ones that were there (at the Leavitt Invite), they all (did) a good job,” he said. “And then Molly (Curry) came out this year. She hasn’t been out since junior high.”

The preseason is largely about finding out which events are best for athletes, and that is definitely the case for Annie Rose Miller. The freshman had four top-three finishes in the meet — three in individual events, including two wins, and as part of a second-place relay team.

“She’ll be in pole vault and hurdles, possibly relays,” Roberts said, though he admitted, “I don’t know where to put her yet.”

The Leavitt Invite only provided Roberts with a small sample of what could be, with more than half the athletes out at other school functions. He noted, for example, that nobody ran in the 400, 800, 1,500 or 3,000 on the girls side.

But what he did see was encouraging.

“We had about 19 down there, girls and boys. But on the boys side, they did what they expected. … The same with the girls. Basey Dawson came out on top in the girls javelin. All of them did good for” the opening meet.

The Eagles don’t return to the track until April 7 at Prairie City. The 1A Special District 4 track meet is slated for May 19 in Baker, with state the following week in Eugene.

The district meet could be more challenging than in recent years with Pilot Rock and Union dropping down to 1A, but if the Eagles do well in the district meet, it could bode well for a good state meet.

“We got one of the toughest leagues,” he said, “But we gotta get out of our own league (first).”