A state track championship for the ages

There’s something special about a track and field championship, perhaps because it takes a series of individual accomplishments to forge a truly team result.

Each individual athlete and sometimes a four-person relay team must produce his or her share of the winning point total, so while it takes an entire team to carry the day, it’s done one event at a time, and everything must fall into place for the championship to happen.

The state title won by the Lovell Bulldogs Saturday in Casper was remarkable in that Lovell High was, by far, the smallest school in the top 10 at State, with enrollment figures dwarfed by the likes of Cody, Lander, Powell, Douglas, Buffalo and Worland.

In basketball and to a certain extent football, one or two great players can make a huge difference in the fortunes of a team, though it takes a strong team overall to win. But in track and field, a large school can oftentimes load up in the many events and, through sheer numbers, produce enough points to win.

Lovell took just 14 boys to the state track meet, and the team produced no points in the middle distance and long distance races, nor in any relay race. But the team loaded up on field events, placing three athletes in the triple jump and pole vault and two in the long jump, high jump and discus. Sprinters produced a lot of points, too.

And so for this year, qualify overcame quantity for the Lovell Bulldogs, a team that broke school records in the 300-meter hurdles, long jump, triple jump and pole vault in a true display of outstanding athletic achievement.

The field event records were each 30 or more years old, and in a couple of cases the records would seemingly last forever. In the triple jump, for instance, David Walker jumped 46-5 to set the school record in 1993, and while Lovell has had a number of great jumpers over the years, the record was never seriously threatened until Matthew Newman came along. The springy junior broke Walker’s record at the regional track meet, then shattered it at State, winning the event at 47-5, a full foot further than Walker jumped in 1993.

Similarly, Taggart Shumway broke Joel Nicholls’ 30-year-old record in the pole vault, and Gavin Robertson snapped the long jump record set by Trent Bowers in 1995. Newman broke his own record in the 300-meter hurdles.

When Lovell was elevated to Class 3A a few years ago after dominating class 2A for years, many Lovell sports fans, including this editor and even a few coaches, wondered if the school would ever sniff a state title against the big schools, especially this year with Cody dropping from Class 4A. Cody has a two-year average enrollment of 630 compared to 239 for Lovell.

How wrong we were. The talented Bulldogs won the state boys basketball championship, beating Cody three times in the process, then captured the state track title, winning all six meets in which the Bulldogs had a complete squad including Regionals and State. Truly an unbelievable season.

Hats off to the Bulldogs for a superb sports year.

— David Peck