North Knox Varsity Track participated in the Keith Jones Classic hosted by Clay City on Friday night.
Congratulations to the North Knox Lady Warriors for finishing 1st of all 10 teams competing. They exacted revenge upon WRV, beating them by 1 point, exactly one week after WRV girls took down the Lady Warriors by just 1 point in the Miner Invite at Linton!
On the boys side, North Knox finished 6th of the 10 teams in attendance.
Top Scorers:
Cooper Adams, sophomore, 13.5 points – 3rd place 300m hurdles, 5th place 110m hurdles, 6th place 100m dash, T-8 in high jump
Grant Wampler, sophomore, 10 points – 1st place discus
Tayevion Smith, junior, 9.5 points – 3rd place 400m dash, 2nd place 4x400m relay, 3rd place 4x100m relay
Coach Notes
What a great day to be a Warrior! As the Varsity Boys Track Coach, this has been such a fun season. My younger guys are starting to really round out into quality track athletes, and the buy-in from the team as a whole is happening more so this season than any other. I believe winning is truly infectious, and although our boys team record is sub-.500 currently, watching the sustained success of our girls program has been a great motivator for the kids and coaches alike. These young men truly want to improve their performances, not just for their personal pride, but to increase team scoring and improve the win-loss record as much as possible.
That mentality was needed more than ever tonight. Due to a myriad of circumstances, a plethora of reasons, even a smorgasbord of situations, if you will, the boys were without any seniors tonight. I sat the boys down before the meet and explained just how greatly this would affect our scoring potential on the heat sheet, how it would rearrange relay teams, and how many individuals would be asked to do events they don’t normally do. The following athletes stepped up above the rest, though this truly was a team effort:
Cooper Adams scored in all 4 of his events, as a sophomore, nonetheless! Check the scoring for almost any boys track event in bigger meets like this, and the point-getters are majority juniors and seniors. Cooper came to me a couple weeks back asking for a bigger role on the team and a rehashing of his event assignments, and boy did he deliver tonight! Someone had to make up for the lost points of the absent seniors, and Cooper sure did his part.
Grant Wampler has been working his tail off on throwing events, discus in particular. At Clay City, it all came to fruition as Grant tossed a 136’7″ disc! This mark would be good enough to qualify him for regionals later this month (based upon the 2025 season’s top 3 discus throwers from the Princeton Sectionals). Grant’s win in discus is the first time in my tenure as the varsity track coach that any athlete or relay has placed 1st overall in any invite meet we attend. He also changed his shot put form to a spin, as opposed to the classic glide, and threw a PR of 33’1″, which put him one spot away from scoring in that event as well. The future is bright from this sophomore.
Tyler Daugherty ran very well tonight. He was on pace to score in the 800m run but got tripped coming out of the last turn of the first lap. After doing a full somersault, Tyler got back up immediately and still ran a PR. He used his disappointment to fuel him through the 4x400m relay, where he served as the replacement for the absent Logan Fourman. With Tyler’s help, that relay team placed 2nd in the event, narrowly losing out to a talented Seven Oaks squad.
Tayevion Smith, Reid Slaven, and Klouser Rode also deserve a shoutout. They all ran on the 4×1 and 4×4 relays, which claimed 3rd and 2nd place finishes, respectively, as well as the open 400m dash. Tayevion and Reid ran their 400m dashes in the 57s, claiming 3rd and 4th place there, as well as strong splits in both relays. Klouser, as a freshman, has been huge all year. Tonight, he helped ensure all three relay teams scored for us, and he ran a PR 400m dash to claim 8th place in that event.
I’m super proud of the efforts of all my athletes, and I just hope they continue to strive for greater successes in this sport this season and beyond. We performed well overall tonight, but those absent seniors will leave some big scoring shoes to fill next season when they’ve moved on for good. This invite was just a sampling of what the next iteration of my track team will look like, and although I’m not ready to look past what’s left of this season, I sure am excited about the future of the program in these athletes’ hands. Or feet I should say.
North Knox Track competes again on Tuesday, May 5th at home in a triangular meet with Barr-Reeve and North Daviess. This will serve as senior night; bring out the salsa and pico de gallo to celebrate our athletes!
Comments