Finals appearance by Viking sprinters closes out a successful season

A junior and a senior from Posen traveled to the Michigan High School Athletic Association state finals in Grand Rapids. The appearance at state by sprinter Amanda Pieczynski and James Sobek was a culmination of the hard work the athletes put in during the season. The results just weren?t indicative of what occurred at meets leading up to state. Three-decade veteran coach Chuck Wozniak said they weren?t their best performances of the season.

Pieczynski was a little off her best race of 12.79 and finished with a 13.10 in the 100-meter dash, one of two events she qualified for at state. ?You are running into a lot of Division III runners (schools), which are a lot bigger than ours,? said Wozniak. ?Going into the seedings, there were five girls running in the 12.5s at regionals.? Pieczynski fell short of her personal goal of getting through the preliminaries and semis and to finish her season in the final race. Wozniak said there was a new state record set in the 100-meter dash.

?THERE ARE a lot of fast girls out there,? the coach said. It was the same story in the 200 for Pieczynski, who finished fifth in the preliminaries. She needed to place fourth or higher to advance to the next race. Sobek qualified for the state finals in the 400-meter dash, but was fighting a sore back. He finished the only race he participated in with a time of 53.58 and ended up in thirteenth place.

?We?re not going to be looking for excuses, but James injured himself at the conference meet and he has been fighting a back problem for the last week and a half,? Wozniak said. ?He ran really well in the first half of the ra

ce, but then that back tightened up, and he struggled to get to the finish line.? That brings to a close a successful track season in Posen, with numerous personal records broken the last couple of weeks of the season. The program also had one more athlete qualify for the state finals than a year ago when Pieczynski was the lone qualifier.

NOW WOZNIAK awaits the decision of the Posen Consolidated Schools Board of Education, and will cross his fingers that the athletes won?t have to fundraise again for 10 months to keep the program afloat. The coach said the decision will be made sometime during the next month.

The North Star League claimed four state championships Saturday. Melissa Hale of Atlanta claimed a title in the long jump, while Kyle Fortin ran the fastest race in the 400-meter. Hale had two state titleholders; Brian Wilson in the pole vault and Curtis Barkley in the 1600-mile run. The Fairview girls earned all-state honors in the 3200-meter relay and placed third.