90-60 win makes it 3-0 in GNL
Taishae Wallace winds up to throw the discuss against West Valley. The junior won the event with a toss of 98 feet, 2 inches.
See a photo gallery from the event here.
Cheney's girls' track and field team kept their Great Northern League mark perfect at 3-0 with a 90-60 win over visiting West Valley last Wednesday.
First-place finishes on the track went to Alsatta Bakana, Jolene Whiteley and Stephanie Assonken. Whiteley and Assonken won the 800 and 100 hurdles respectively, while Bakana's time of 23.36 seconds not only earned her first, but set a new personal record and gave her the fastest 2A time in the event this season.
Cheney swept all three relays, with the Alexis Miller, Gabrielle Nguyen, Jocelyn Cone and Alexis Van Horne capturing the 4x100 and the 4x200 while Nguyen, Cone, Whiteley and Bakana teamed to win the 4x400.
The Blackhawks captured first in six of the seven field events, and had at least two athletes in the top three in the same number. Taishae Wallace won the discus, Rylie Pease the javelin, Bakana the high jump, Zoe Lamb the pole vault, Assonken the long jump and KD Skillingstad the triple jump.
Cheney split its team Saturday, with some athletes traveling south for the Pasco Invitational and the rest staying home to compete in the fast-growing Van Kuren Invitational, formerly the Big Red, which this year hosted 27 teams.
The Blackhawks were the highest scoring 2A team at Edgar Brown Stadium in Pasco, notching 29 points to finish seventh out of 62 scoring teams. Bakana led the way for Cheney, finishing third in the 200, second in the 400 with a PR of 58.65 - second fastest in 2A in the event - and fourth in the high jump with a season record of 5 feet, 3 inches - the top mark in 2A so far.
"She was a beast," head coach Tom Stralser said. "She's only going to get faster and jump higher too."
Bakana also teamed with Cone, Nguyen and Whiteley for eighth in the 4x400 relay. Pease was second in the javelin, and Stralser said she is poised to go further than the 138-03 she threw at Pasco because she is consistently throwing around her season-best of 138-06.
Lamb was eighth in the pole vault at 10-feet, and once she gets a couple of things fixed, Stralser expects she will hit 11, 11-06 later in May. Skillingstad was 10th in the triple jump in 34-11.25. She was 20th in the long jump at 15-02, but had a scratch on an 18-foot jump, Stralser said.
At the Van Kuren, named for former Cheney and Eastern Washington track and field legend the late Lawson Van Kuren, Cheney finished 17th with seven points. Freshman Maddie Warren had the only top-10 individual finish, ninth in the 100.
The 4x200 team of Atrena Gregory, Mackenzie Huotari, Elizabeth Potter and Warren was seventh, as was the 4x400 team of Maisie Short, Venessa Flowers, Alexis Ewen and Potter. The 4x100 team of Huotari, Gregory, Juliette Gaul and Warren finished eighth.
John McCallum can be reached at jmac@cheneyfreepress.com.
See a photo gallery from the event here.
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