Petersburg High wins first track meet in over 30 years

The Petersburg High School girls track team won their first meet in over three decades. The girls took first place in Ketchikan over the weekend while the boys’ team took third place. The girls also broke four school records.

The teams participating in the meet besides Petersburg included Ketchikan, Thunder Mountain, Sitka, Juneau, and Thorne Bay. A few of those schools have twice as many athletes on their teams as Petersburg.

But the other girls’ teams were not even close to Petersburg who finished the meet with 100 total points, 20 more than second place Ketchikan and 32 more points than third place Thunder Mountain. The Petersburg boys earned 67 points which was just two points behind second placed Sitka. The Ketchikan boys team won with 87 points.

Besides winning the meet, the Petersburg girls also broke a few school records including the four by 800 meter relay. In the relay were Kylie Wallace, Robyn Schwartz, Fran Abbott, and Hannah Pfundt. The team ran it in 10 minutes and 54 seconds.

Freshmen Izabelle Ith broke the record in the 100 meter hurdles AND the 100 meter dash. Her time in the 100 hurdles was 16.37 seconds and she finished the 100 meter dash in 13.22 seconds. She was also just one inch off from the long jump record at 15 feet, 7 inches.

Senior Grace Weller broke the school record for the two-mile race with a time of 12 minutes, 7 seconds.

Winning the meet was definitely special for the girls’ team. But perhaps no one was more excited than their coach Brad Taylor who has been waiting for decades for the stars to align. It was the school’s first win in the 32 years he’s been coaching track in Petersburg.