On Thursday May 13, the AHS track team competed at district B-6 track in Ogallala. At the end of the day, three events from Alliance qualified for the state track meet in Omaha. 

With a throw of 50’7”,  junior Isaiah Martinez qualified for state in the event of shot put. Another event that qualified was the girls 4×400 relay. The team consisted of sophomore Kenna Montes, freshman Jaelynne Clarke, senior Diana Kollars, junior Riley Lawrence and alternate junior Amauri Browning. Finally, Kollars also qualified in the open 400. 

In an interview with Clarke, she stated that she is “excited that I qualified for state. In the beginning of the season, I didn’t expect it at all. As the season progressed, I was hopeful because we had a really good chance of qualifying.” This year is Clarke’s first year on the track team, so it is very exciting to have a freshman that qualified for state. 

This is also Lawrence’s first year qualifying for state. Her freshman year, the girls 4×400 relay team was very close to qualifying, but just missed the mark. Specifically, they missed the mark by a mere thousandth of a second. Because of COVID, Lawrence’s sophomore year of track was cancelled. For her junior year, she set her goals high, and achieved her goal of going to state. Lawrence stated, “I am excited to go compete. However, I’m very nervous about the competition. Right now, we are sitting at sixth place in District B with a time of 4:09.48 seconds.” 

The girls 4×400 relay team has been dominating this season. They took first place at the Broken Bow meet, the Scottsbluff Twilight meet, Best of the West in Scottsbluff, Western Conference in Chadron, the Alliance meet and the Bayard meet. Even though this 4×400 team had different members at the beginning of the season, this specific group of girls have shaved 13 seconds off of their time. 

The tracksters that qualified for state in Omaha will be leaving Thursday May 20, and competing on Friday the 21, and Saturday the 22. The SPUD would like to wish these tracksters good luck! These students represent Alliance very well, and we are all looking forward to seeing how you guys compete!