Davis High hosts all three area high schools for friendly track meet – Woodland Daily Democrat

With the track and field season rounding into its early-season form, Davis High School hosted an early-season practice meet featuring all three area high schools, Woodland, Pioneer, and Woodland Christian, along with hosts Davis and Winters.

“Wednesday’s meet is basically a practice meet, but the results are going to be official, so its a chance for kids to earn qualifying times for future meets,” said Jarred Wilding, Pioneer track and field coach. “It’s also a chance for new athletes to see what they have and try different events. This meet will help us figure out where we want to put our athletes during league meets.”

After a competitive league season over in the Golden Empire League which saw Dixon and Casa Roble win the varsity girl’s and boy’s titles respectively, both Pioneer and Woodland will hope to break those team’s reigns as champions.

“We think our girls have a pretty good chance at the league title,” Wilding said. “Both us and Dixon lost some girls. We are very running heavy, and they are very field heavy, so it’s hard to gauge how it will play out.”

Some girls who figure to play a crucial role for the Patriots are junior sprinters Hanna Medina and Leslie Hernandez-Bautista.

Over on the other side of town, the Wolves plan to continue building off where they left off last season with such a young team.

“We have some outstanding returning athletes from last year, and we are young that it gives me a feeling that we will be able to compete in our league,” said Vic Rosales, Woodland track and field coach. “The league isn’t about winning a ton of events. Its about scoring points, so we will be very conscious of that trying to pick up as many points as we can.”

Rosales also appreciated the organization of the event at such an early point in the season.

“The nice thing about today is that we get to compete with some excellent teams,’ Rosales said. “Pioneer has some really solid kids. Winters ha some athletes, and Davis is a perennial Division-I power. It gives us a good opportunity to see where we are times wise early in the season.”

Some athletes to look out for include cross country sensation Mahalia Quintana and her twin brother Julian Quintana, both long-distance runners.

Dora Gomez and Julianna Villanueva should get some big points in the hurdles. At the same time, junior throwers Pedro Tena and Issac Tafoya should make big jumps in thier second season on the team in the discus and shotput.

After coming up one point shy of the league title last year, Woodland Christian head track and field coach Jill Hardin hopes the returning athletes can help close the narrow gap between them and a league title.

“We had a much smaller team than others in the league,” Hardin said. “So, I felt we did really well considering our size.”

On the girl’s side, the Cardinals only have three athletes, and they are all freshman throwers.

“We had zero girls last year, but this year we have three freshman girls competing at the varsity level,” Hardin said. “I kind of convinced some of my students to come out. They are all still learning, so we’ll see how they do in the league.”