Junior Luke Darrough placed fourth in pole vault behind senior Matt Bush in third place. Darrough scored five points from pole vault, four points for his fifth place in the 400-meter dash and another four points for contributing to the second leg of the 4×400 meter relay.
Darrough’s scores in his three events resulted in roughly 12 percent of RBHS’s cumulative score this weekend.
“You get out of it what you put into it,” Darrough said. “I just wanted to go to sectionals in all of my events and not disappoint the team in my relays.”
Darrough’s fourth place in the pole vault, with a height of 12 feet 9 inches, was enough to carry him on to sectionals but not in the 4×400 meter relay or 400-meter dash races.
In total, nine individuals and three relay teams from RBHS will proceed to sectionals, including Darrough.
To further contribute to RBHS’s overall score, senior Nathan Keown and junior Evan Schulte swept the 1600-meter run with respective times of 4:28.33 and 4:34.94. They scored 18 points together.
The boys team was not limited to upperclassmen this weekend, however. Grant Sykuta, a Jefferson Junior High School freshman, competed in the 4×800 meter relay as the third runner of four. His individual time clocked in at 2:06.
“I was on the third leg, and on the last stretch of my leg I out-kicked a Hickman runner and gave Josh [Ripley, sophomore], our anchor, a few steps on Hickman in the second place spot, so all I was thinking was that I gave our anchor a pretty good position to stay in,” Sykuta said. “After the race, looking back, I was kind of disappointed with myself. I felt like I could have pushed it harder, and I’m really just hoping I have another chance next weekend at sectionals, I think that the boys team performed very well. We ran awful about a month before at the Capital City meet, and coming back to get second at districts was rather impressive.”
The overall time for the boys 4×800 meter relay was 8:23.58, a time that took second to Smith-Cotton High School’s time of 8:20.60. The boys 4×800 squad scored eight points to contribute to RBHS’s total score.
“We just really need the competitive spirit back that we had,” Sykuta said. “We really gotta want it, to perform. As a team, the focus level needs a boost for sectionals.”
