Sports

GBW Girls' Track Runner-up at Glenbard North Sectional

Behind four-event state qualifiers Kathryn Pickett and Kinn Badger, the Glenbard West girls' track and field team finished second at the Class 3A Glenbard North sectional Thursday night in Carol Stream.

The banner season the Glenbard West girls track and field team has had comes down to a final weekend of competition.

After winning the West Suburban Silver Conference championship last Saturday, the Hilltoppers were once again in the thick of battle Thursday night at the Class 3A Glenbard North sectional in Carol Stream.

Behind its four scintillating relays and two-event champion Kathryn Pickett, Glenbard West fell two points shy of the team championship to Wheaton Warrenville South.

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“We had a lot of difficult choices to make,” West coach Kelly Hass said of moving star sprinters Kinn Badger and Bridget Flanagan out of the 200-meter dash.

But the moves paid off for the Hilltoppers’ relays.

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Badger and Flanagan were the mainstays of championship units at 400, 800 and 1,600 meters--all in elite times--to propel the Hilltoppers’ efforts.

“We ran faster than what we did last year (at the state meet),” Hass said. “(The relay runners) are mentally tough. They pride themselves on perfectionism.”
The 400 quartet of Pickett, Caroline Maloney, Badger and Flanagan has turned in the second-fastest time in the state.

The unit was clocked in 48.3 seconds in capturing its first of three sprint-relay titles.

The 800-meter contingent followed suit later on, and Badger was close to exhaustion when she crossed the finish line for the 1,600 group in a sterling time of 3:53.49.

Badger and Pickett became four-event state qualifiers Thursday night; Badger was runner-up in the 100 dash in addition to her participation on the three sprint relays.

Pickett, the Hilltoppers’ Western Michigan-bound three-event state finalist from a year ago, led off the 400 relay and made the state mark in the long jump.
Pickett won both hurdles races to earn automatic inclusion to the state finals next weekend at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston.

“I was pleased with my times (in the two hurdles events),” Pickett said. “If Caroline and I can get our handoff better (in the 400 relay), we can get the time even lower.”

“We have a relay mindset (among the sprinters),” Flanagan said after Badger clinched the meet-closing 1,600 quartet. “I knew it was going to be close (in the 400 relay against Willowbrook star Cherise Porter on the anchor leg).”

Flanagan held off the reigning 200-meter state runner-up by 12 one-hundredths of a second for the Hilltoppers’ first title.

Maddie Nagle, who qualified in the open 1,600-meter run, anchored the Hilltoppers’ 3,200 relay to a fourth state berth in the relays.

Sarah Dau claimed the final state berth with her runner-up performance in the shot put.


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