WYNOT — Wynot track coach Lee Heimes welcomed 13 Blue Devils and 10 Lady Blue Devils to the track this past week with seven athletes returning with state track experience.
For the Blue Devils, Dylan Heine, Chase Schroeder, Korbin Guenther and Cooper Oligmueller are back after competing in Omaha to end last season.
Schroeder brought home some hardware with a sixth-place finish in the 800 and a seventh-place showing in the 400.
Heine qualified in the triple jump and high jump and Schroeder and Heine joined Oligmueller and Guenther as part of the Wynot 3,200-meter relay team which earned a spot at the state championships.
Heimes and Tammy Wieseler and Julie Heimes will be coaching the teams this spring and Lee Heimes thinks they have the nucleus for a good team by the end of the season.
“We were just playing basketball, but that’s a good problem to have,” Heimes said. “We’ll get things going and I know these kids will put in the work.”
For the Lady Blue Devils, three track athletes return with state experience.
Kinslee Heimes, Myrah Sudbeck and Eliza Lange ran in Omaha as part of the Lady Blue Devils’ 400-meter relay team.
Heimes and Sudbeck are seniors, Lange is a junior.
Annika Heimes, another senior, is on the team along with juniors Addison Pinkelman and Joslyn Hochstein, sophomores, Bennet Steffen and Payton Johansen, and freshmen, Kiera Heimes and Tiara Sudbeck.
The Blue Devil quartet listed above will be joined by teammates: sophomores, Jed Nelson, Kason Hanson, Parker Schmidt, Kotner Koch and Karter Pick; and freshmen, Braylon Hans, Lane Heimes, Nixen Heimes and Cash Lenzen.
Both teams will compete in the same meets this season with the first four meets at the Wynot home-away-from-home track at the Hartington Community Athletic Complex.
Wynot was supposed to run, throw and jump in Hartington March 26 in the Cedar Catholic meet and will compete April 2 in a Hartington-Newcastle meet, April 9 in another meet run by Cedar Catholic and April 15 in an HNS meet.
The Ponca invitational is set for April 23 in Ponca and the Lewis & Clark Conference Meet will be April 27, also in Ponca.
The Winside meet is slated for May 2 in Laurel at Haskell Field with the district meet scheduled for May 8. State Track is set to go May 17-18 at Burke Stadium in Omaha.