Posted: 4/16/03

FL boys, girls track teams off and running

Berk Brown
Sports Editor

Both the Forest Lake boys and girls track teams got their first taste of a major outdoor meet last week with good results.

The Forest Lake boys took eighth place at the Dean Hudek Invitational in Cottage Grove on Saturday out of 11 teams.

Meanwhile, the Forest Lake girls tied for first place at the Suburban East Conference Relays on Tuesday, April 8, at Stillwater.

For the boys team, the finish wasnít as high as coach Paul Kendrick would have liked, but at the same time he said he was pleased with several performances and the fact his relatively young squad was able to get some high-level competition under its belt.

ìWe had some missed opportunities,î Kendrick said. ìWe thought we might possibly score several more points, but one of the highlights was that pretty much everybody for a mark, and for a young team to do that this early in the season is good.î

Forest Lake had several individual performances which stood out at the invitational.

Justin Okeson had a strong day individually, finishing fourth in the 110-meter high hurdles in 17.38 seconds. He also finished seventh in the 300 intermediate hurdles in a time of 44.92.

Forest Lake also got a strong showing out of its 1600 relay team of Chris Clark, Lorin Skoglund, Chad Bjorklund and Kyle Fuller. The team finished the race in 3:36.16.

Skoglund also finished fifth in the 400 in 52.85 while Clark was 11th in the 800 in 2:11.7 and Bjorklund was eighth in the 1600 in 4:44.0.

Kendrick also said he was pleased with the sprint performances from Matt Keller and Aaron Schneider as well as his three freshman pole vaulters, Alex Boreum, Ryan Turry and Pat Taylor.

For the girls team, which just missed a trip to the state true team meet a year ago, the Rangers got the season started off very well by finishing in a first-place tie with Mounds View at the SEC Relays.

Forest Lake and Mounds View each finished the meet with 99 points while White Bear Lake finished third with 90.

Forest Lake got first-place finishes in the low hurdles relay team, the long jump relay and the 8 x 200 relay team.

The Forest Lake high jump team posted a second-place finish, as did the 100 hurdles team, the 400 relay, the 800 medley relay, the shot put team and the 4 x 200 relay team.

Forest Lake will host its own invitational at 4 p.m. today (Thursday) at both the Forest Lake Senior High track and the Century Junior High track facility.

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