Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY – Daniel Brown was stuck in an 800-meter rut.

The City High senior was steadily progressing early this season and dropped a season-best split of 1:55 on the opening leg of the 4×800 relay at the Forwald Relays on April 18.

Since then it had been a steady dose of disappointing times for Brown including a 13th place finish in 2:01.59 at the Drake Relays.

In his final trip around Raffensperger Track at City High Brown snapped out of his slump and secured a trip to the state meet.

Brown ran a pair of sub-1:58 800s on Friday leading the City High 4×800 team to a win and claiming the 800 title at the Class 4A, District 5 meet at City High.

“I get kind of frustrated but I know it’s just part of the process,” Brown said. “I was hovering at that mid-1:58 range and I just kept running that over and over and over so tonight to go back-to-back 1:57s was big. I can feel that jump coming to get back down in that 1:55 or 1:54 range.”

Brown ran a 1:57 split leading off the winning City High 4×800 team and captured the open 800 title in a career-best time of 1:57.36.

“Especially for tonight, my last meet here, with back-to-back low 1:57s in the 4×800 and the open 800 that was big for me,” Brown said. “We had a good week of practice and we handled the delay from yesterday well as a whole group together.”  

Led by Brown City High won four events and had eight events automatically qualify for next week’s 4A state meet while finishing third in the team standings with 110 points.

West High won the team title with 138 followed by Cedar Rapids Kennedy with 120.

“We’ve been battling with the top teams around the state all year and West High and Kennedy are exceptional teams and they just have a few more horses than we do,” City High coach Mike Moore said. “While we are maybe disappointed in not getting a few things automatically qualified we have some hope with some other things maybe getting into with the top 12 marks.”

Brown gave the City High 4×800 team a lead it would never give up with a strong opening leg.

Ry Threlkeld-Wiegand, Joe Fisher and Max DePrenger made the early lead stand up as City High won in a time of 8:05.32.

“We have Ry and I are the two leaders in the group and then we have three guys right now that are all competing for those final two spots and all of them performed very well tonight,” Brown said. “We had great times across the board for those guys.”

The finale for Brown came in the open 800 when he held off runner-up Lewis Kleman of Cedar Rapids Washington by more than a second.

His winning time for Brown was more than four seconds faster than the time he clocked at the Drake Relays last month.

“It definitely was disappointing just because it was my senior year and I wished I would have performed better but I also knew I wasn’t 100 percent but all of that is water under the bridge now and tonight feels good to back down low,” Brown said. “Coach Moore always says, ‘happiest in May’ you run great at Drake good job but we all know our focus is for the state meet.”  

City High also got an individual titles from Kaleba Jack in the long jump and Oisin Leopold in the 110 hurdles.

Jack won with a jump of 22-2 while Leopold backed up his 110 hurdle win at the Mississippi Valley Conference divisional meet last week with a title in 14.98.

“He won the 110 hurdles last week at conference and you can just see him coming on,” Moore said of Leopold. “He puts in a lot of time and works really hard at it so it’s good to see him have success.”

Junior Tevon Williamson qualified for state with a runner-up finish in the high jump by clearing 6-3 while the Little Hawks got state-qualifying runner-up finishes in a trio of relays.

The 4×200 was second in 1:30.47, the distance medley was second in 3:40.2 and the shuttle hurdle was runner-up to Drake Relays champion Cedar Rapids Kennedy in 1:00.36.

Class 4A, District 5 Meet

At City High

Team scores – 1. West High 138; 2. Cedar Rapids Kennedy 120; 3. City High 110; 4. Ottumwa 96; 5. Cedar Rapids Prairie 95; 6. Cedar Rapids Washington 83; 7. Liberty High 70; 8. Cedar Rapids Jefferson 27

Individual results (Automatic Qualifiers; Area placewinners)

100 – 1. Gabe Caruthers (ICW) 11.05; 2. Cairron Hendred (CRK) 11.15; 6. Tahj Williamson (ICH) 11.63; 7. DaRhon Fouch (ICH) 11.66

200 – 1. Gabe Caruthers (ICW) 22.22; 2. Brayden Wright (CRW) 22.67; 5. Tayshaun McGree (ICL) 23.46; 7. Nate Gudenkauf (ICW) 23.82; 8. JaQuel Davis (ICL) 24.0

400 – 1. Gabe Caruthers (ICW) 49.1; 2. Drake Woody (ICL) 50.92; 3. Grahm Goering (ICW) 51.87; 5. Kelby Telander (ICL) 52.53

800 – 1. Daniel Brown (ICH) 1:57.36; 2. Lewis Kleman (CRW) 1:58.76; 7. Yousif Salama (ICW) 2:04.72

1,600 – 1. Kolby Greiner (ICW) 4:26.89; 2. Max Locher (CRW) 4:28.25; 4. Ry Threlkeld-Wiegand (ICH) 4:30.62; 6. Will Conrad (ICW) 4:32.91

3,200 – 1. Kolby Greiner (ICW) 9:30.06; 2. Jack Pendergast (CRP) 9:37.44; 6. Mitchell Wilkes (ICH) 10:11.52; 7. Nicolo Schianchi (ICW) 10:12.85

110 hurdles – 1. Oisin Leopold (ICH) 14.98; 2. Drew Bartels (CRK) 15.1; 5. Cole Mabry (ICW) 15.52; 8. Ryan Sartain (ICL) 16.33

400 hurdles – 1. Drake Woody (ICL) 54.97; 2. Isaac Eaton (OTT) 56.78; 4. Jason Lu (ICW) 57.67; 6. Noah Kabat (ICH) 58.29; 7. Soren Ostby (ICH) 58.61

Shot put – 1. Landon Green (ICW) 54-11; 2. Cam Jones (CRK) 50-9; 4. Mason Applegate (ICW) 47-10 ¼; 7. Raph Hamilton (ICH) 45-7 ¾

Discus – 1. Cam Jones (CRK) 178-1; 2. Kaden Schilling (CRP) 156-2; 3. Landon Green (ICW) 146-1; 4. Levi Sherod (ICH) 145-3; 8. Raph Hamilton (ICH) 127-11

High jump – 1. Marcus Morgan (ICW) 6-4; 2. Tevon Williamson (ICH) 6-3; 8. John Aschenbrenner (ICH) 5-6

Long jump – 1. Kaleba Jack (ICH) 22-2; 2. Drew Bartels (CRK) 21-8 ¼; 3. JaQuel Davis (ICL 21-2 ¾; 6. DaRhon Fouch (ICH) 20-4 ¾; 7. Ryan Gudenkauf (ICW) 20-4 ½

4×100 – 1. Cedar Rapids Washington 43.46; 2. Ottumwa 43.47; 5. Liberty High (Kaleb Williams, JaQuel Davis, Tayshaun McGee, Evan Chandler) 44.83; 6. City High (Oisin Leopold, Giovanni Housson, Sila Lulinda, DaRhon Fouch) 44.84; 7. West High (Shamar Wyatt, Fabian Brown, Tyuss Bell, Ryan Gudenkauf) 44.93

4×200 – 1. Ottumwa 1:30.47; 2. City High (Kaleba Jack, Max DePrenger, Jovan Harris, DaRhon Fouch) 1:30.61; 6. West High (Nate Gudenkauf, Fabian Brown, Jason Lu, Ryan Gudenkauf) 1:33.49; 8. Liberty High (Jacob Adam, Dominic Ehrman, JaQuel Davis, Kaleb Williams) 1:36.64

4×400 – 1. Liberty High (Kelby Telander, Bo Gryp, Ben Houselog, Drake Woody) 3:27.27; 2. Cedar Rapids Prairie 3:28.62; 5. City High (Max DePrenger, Jovan Harris, Matt Taylor, Carter Seaton) 3:32.41; 7. West High (Tyuss Bell, Grahm Goering, Ian Prescott, Jason Lu) 3:35.15

4×800 – 1. City High (Daniel Brown, Ry Threlkeld-Wiegand, Joe Fisch, Max DePrenger) 8:05.32; 2. Ottumwa 8:06.85; 4. West High (Caden Noeller, Raymond Yang, Will Conrad, Ian Prescott) 8:12.38; 6. Liberty High (Jack Kinzer, Ethan O’Donnell, Bo Gryp, Tyler Lambert) 8:21.95

Shuttle hurdle relay – 1. Cedar Rapids Kennedy 1:00.17; 2. City High (Oisin Leopold, John Aschenbrenner, Tevon Williamson, Griffen Vogelgesang) 1:00.36; 5. West High (Jason Lu, Anuj Jani, Chris Caruthers, Clayton Bopp) 1:06.41; 6. Liberty High (Daqwan Sanders, Ryan Sartain, DeJuan Smith, Darius Willis-Newell) 1:08.38;

Sprint medley relay – 1. West High (Shamar Wyatt, Tyuss Bell, Nick Johnson, Gabe Caruthers) 1:33.68; 2. Ottumwa 1:35.58; 4. Liberty High (Evan Chandler, Ben Houselog, Kelby Telander, Drake Woody) 1:36.05; 8. City High (Kaleba Jack, Max DePrenger, Jovan Harris, Carter Seaton) 1:37.81

Distance medley relay – 1. Liberty High (Evan Chandler, Tayshaun McGee, Ben Houselog, Bo Gryp) 3:39.12; 2. City High (Kaleba Jack, Jovan Harris, Carter Seaton, Matt Taylor) 3:40.2; 4. West High (Ryan Gudenkauf, Nick Johnson, Tyuss Bell, Kolby Greiner) 3:41.23

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