Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY – From the start of the season City High head coach Jeremy Mims stressed time and time again to the members of the Little Hawk 4×400 squad that they could do something special.

At the state track and field meet last week the City High squad of CeCe Kelly-Harvey, Mia DePrenger, Iris Wedemeyer and Lillian Reynolds proved Mims right.

The City High foursome set a school-record in a runner-up finish in the 4×400 on Saturday at the Class 4A state track and field meet at Drake Stadium in Des Moines.

“Our coach told us at the beginning that this team was going to be really good we just had to get all the pieces together,” Kelly-Harvey said. “He always said we could do it and we did it at the end.”

Every member of the record-setting squad admitted to questioning at some point during the season if the group could really make good on the type of success Mims repeatedly predicted.

The belief from Mims never wavered.

“After districts our coach was saying I really don’t think will go out and compete as hard as we do because he knows that we are really competitive when we start racing,” DePrenger said. “Being a coach, he is obviously going to say that we can go out and win it but I think he honestly believed that we could.”

Buoyed by that belief from Mims the Little Hawks came on strong at the perfect time.

City High came to Drake Stadium with the fourth fastest 4×400 time in Class 4A this season.

The Little Hawks had the seventh fastest qualifying time from state qualifying meets and posted the fifth best time from Friday’s prelims with a season-best 4:02.59.

“Once we got to the prelims we weren’t really sure what to expect because we hadn’t run the four fastest of our girls since Drake,” Reynolds said. “Getting into prelims and then getting into finals we really had no expectations we just wanted to go out and run. I honestly had no idea we would end up where we did.”

Where City High ended up was with the best 4×400 performance in the storied history of the program.

City High clocked a 3:56.76 in the finals, finishing second behind 4A champion Ames and besting the previous school record of 3:56.94 set in 2003.

“I had always looked at that time and thought that is really, really fast,” DePrenger said. “We didn’t know if we were going to break four minutes at this point in the season. I have always looked up to that time for so long and to actually have it now is crazy.”

The race started and ended the same way for City High – with stellar runs from its senior anchors.

Kelly-Harvey got the Little Hawks an early lead with a 59-second opening leg.

“I have always struggled with getting a good start,” Kelly-Harvey. “I wanted to make sure I that this start was the best start and I could get the team in the best position. When I saw that I handed off the baton at 59 I was like ‘that’s good’.”

DePrenger split a 59.8 on the second leg and Iris Wedemeyer clocked a 60-second third leg to put City High solidly in second behind Ames which won in 3:54.72.

“Our coach told us we could go out and win it,” Wedemeyer said. “We got fifth at prelims so we thought that was a pretty big goal and we didn’t know if we could go for that but we showed we could do that.”

Reynolds completed the record-breaking run with a 57.6 split on the anchor leg as City High took nearly six seconds off its previous best time of the season.

“It was my last high school race so I think that gave me a lot of adrenaline,” Reynolds said. “It was a great way to finish for sure.”

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