A challenging day, but with some bright spots

MOUNT VERNON — The WaMaC Super Meet has never been loaded like this.

Fourteen conference records were broken Thursday, May 8, at Rogers Family Field in Mount Vernon, where the Clear Creek Amana boys and Mount Vernon girls won the team titles at the 2025 WaMaC Super Meet. The Solon girls placed fifth and the boys were eighth.

“The WaMaC is just completely loaded, especially this year,” Solon girls’ track coach Jessica Hotek said. “It is crazy, crazy strong this year.

“I’m just happy with how we went out and competed.”

Neither the boys nor girls had an event winner.

“That wasn’t one of our goals,” Solon boys’ track coach Mark Sovers said. “We just wanted to be the best version of who we are. We were just here to see some improvement and compete against the very best.”

The Spartans did find a few bright spots.

Kate Shafer finished second in the discus with a personal best throw of 129 feet, 8 inches. She was fifth in the shot put (36 feet, 1.75 inches).

Jerzey Haluska was third in the open 400 in 59.13 seconds, and Addison Seamans was third in the 1,500 run in 5 minutes, 8.39 seconds.

“We had some really good things happen tonight,” Hotek said. “Kate did awesome in both the shot put and discus. Jerzey in the 400 shaved a second off her best time. Kobi (Lietz) had some strong 200 legs for us.”

On the boys side, Kaden Hoeper was second in the high jump with a leap of 6 foot, 2 inches. Caleb Bock and Maddox Kelley finished 2-3 in the long jump. Sovers gathered his team after the meet. The Class 3A state qualifier is back at the same track this week on Thursday, May 15.

“It is hard when you are not at your best, in a conference like this,” Sovers said. “The standards that we’ve set all year long, we just fell short of those tonight.

“I had a conversation of what those standards are, and what we need to change this coming week in order for us to have a different feeling when we walk off the track at this same time next week.”