Young Cobras have banner day at track meet in Silver Lake

Hard work pays off and the Jackson Heights track athletes are starting to see the fruits of their labor, which was quite evident from the results at the track meet in Silver Lake on Tuesday night.

In a split meet with both varsity and junior varsity divisions, all the Cobras held their own, but it was the young athletes in particular who shown brightest as the JH boys won the JV division and the girls took second.

More than that, JH coach Lyle Alley noted he was pleased to see athletes set new personal records, like Hanna Davault in the 3200m run or Jacob Andrews in the javelin. Both of those athletes also won their events in the JV division and results like that are creating a positive environment that is conducive to progress.

“Those young kids really competed well and we had some pretty good performances. As a coach, it’s very gratifying after a kid gets done running a race or doing an event and they came running over to you and how proud they are of telling you that they just PR’d. That happened on more than one occasion,” Alley said. “I saw young people that left that track Tuesday night with a bounce in their step. They were excited for track and field and it’s been a while since we’d seen that.”

Some of the upperclassmen also turned in impressive results, like Katelynn Little completing the distance triple, placing in all three events and recording a season-best time in the 800m run. Alley noted the varsity boys 4x400m relay team also provided some fireworks to end the meet, turning in their best time of the season and just edging out Council Grove for first-place in that race.

That same Council Grove relay team bested Heights at a meet in Hoyt just a few short weeks ago. While the Cobras are still striving to hit certain standards before the championship meets, performances like that show the athletes that progress is being made.

“They come to practice every day. They work hard and Tuesday night we started to see some of the reward of that as some of the times were starting to fall and so on,” Alley said.

Jackson Heights will keep moving forward as the team will next compete at a meet in Seneca next Tuesday starting at 3:30 p.m. Full results for the Cobras from the Silver Lake meet are listed below.