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Editorial: Track teams finish strong
Op-Ed · June 22, 2017


West Branch High School’s girls and boys track and field teams wrapped up another strong season with athletes from both teams earning trips to the state meet.


And while recent news that two longtime girls’ coaches resigned, we expect the team will roll with the change and continue to perform well next season.

Co-Head Girls Coaches Carol Lumpa and Scott Kelly shared the top leadership role with the team starting in 2010, moving up from assistant coaching positions after working under Harlan Ferguson, a 2009 inductee into the National High School Athletic Coaches Assoc. Hall of Fame.

Lumpa and Kelly consistently watched athletes qualify for state since they took over, just as Boys Track Head Coach Taylor Larson did since securing that position prior to the 2015 season.

The girls team this season qualified for five events at the Iowa State meet at Drake Stadium in Des Moines May 18-20: In the 400-meter hurdles, Paige Miller earned third place with a personal-best time of 1:05.79; in the 4x400, Miller, Tatum Koenig, Jaylen Votroubek and Kaiya Luneckas earned sixth place with a season-best time of 4:06.33; Koenig took 17th place in the long jump; Koenig, Votroubek, Luneckas and Miller raced in the shuttle hurdle relay, but Miller took a spill on the eighth hurdle; and Koenig, Votroubek, Luneckas and Miller finished 11th in the 4x200.

“We could not be more proud of them,” Lumpa said of the athletes after state. “One of the toughest things to do in sports is to come back from adversity. These girls will go far and be successful.”

Miller qualified for state in 14 events in four years, earning nine state medals. She also qualified three times for the Drake Relays.

On the boys’ side, the team qualified for two state events: Jordan Baldwin, John Yates, Atlas Kolpin and Ben Thompson ran the 4x800 and finished in 23rd place; and Cooper Kabela ran in the 110m high hurdles, finishing in 18th place.

Larson called it a “great experience” for the athletes who qualified for state.

Both coaches’ comments are dead-on. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. But even if you lose after you qualified for the highest level of competition, there’s no shame in that. You’re on the field.

Starting next season, Ben Holub, an assistant coach with the boys’ team, will take over as head coach of the girls’ team. In small schools, turnover at the head coaching position is a hard reality. Yet moving coaches up from assistant positions makes that a smoother transition for the athletes.

So with a crop of state qualifiers returning next year and familiar faces in both head coaching jobs, no doubt the drive toward excellence will continue in 2018.

For now, we want to offer our congratulations to the boys and girls track-and-field teams for another strong season. Good work.