Covington Catholic’s track and field team traveled down to Lexington on Saturday and came back with some first place hardware.
The Colonels won the Class 2A, Region 4 meet at Henry Clay High School by a wide margin. CovCath tallied 169 points, runner-up Bourbon County finishing with 96 points.
The Colonels took home first place finishes in six events, cleaning up in the distance races as they earned top two spots in both the 1,600 and 3,200 meters. Will Sheets (4:21.50) won the 1,600 with Joe Mayer (4:24.84) finishing second, while Mayer (9:53.41) traded places with Sheets (9:53.42) in the 3,200 by one-hundredth of a second.
The 4×200 relay team of Ethan Long, Jake Heitker, Hank Smith and Jackson Schmid finished first in a time of 1:30.73.
Other first place finishers for the Colonels included Oliver Link in the triple jump (41-feet, three inches), Mason Edwards in the high jump (five-feet, eight inches) and Luke Meagher in the 800 meters (1:59.69).
Nine second-place finishes also helped the Colonels in the dominant region victory as they look for a 2A title next week at the KHSAA state meet at the University of Kentucky on Friday, May 31.
Ethan Long finished second in the 100-meter dash (10.79), 200-meter dash (21.60) and 400 meters (51.45) to individually earn 24 points in the meet. The Colonels 4×800 and 4×400 relay teams also placed second.
Matthew Woolf in the discus (128-feet, five inches) and Will Danneman in the long jump (19-feet, 5.25 inches) were the others to grab second place spots.
Lloyd Memorial’s boys finished seventh as a team while the Holmes girls placed sixth, Lloyd Memorial’s girls in seventh.
Holmes’ Ja Nia Johnson won a region title in the high jump, clearing five-feet. In order to automatically qualify for the Class AA state meet on the 31st, you must finish in the top two at the region meet or be among 10 other state qualifiers from across the state based off region meets in times, distance or height. The at-large bids won’t be determined until all the region meets around the state have concluded.
The Holmes unified team qualified in a couple of events, the mixed 2×50-meter relay, winning the event in a time of 15.09 and the 2×200 mixed unified relay in a time of 56.88.