Gilmour sweeps team titles in NCL track and field meet debut

In the old days, a formal introduction consisted of leaving a calling card on a desk and waiting your turn.

But that’s just not Gilmour’s style. All over the facility, their calling cards reverberate — and May 3 during the North Coast League meet at Padua, the Lancers made this introduction loud and clear.

Gilmour swept the White Division team titles in its NCL meet debut, the boys recording five event wins on Day 2 and finishing with 162 points and the girls amassing 186 points and 10 firsts on the second day of competition.

“I think all of us came out here today, and we all gave it our all to hopefully pull out a conference win,” Lancers multi-sport sophomore standout Madison Olsen said. “This was our first conference that we were in. It was kind of rough and hard for us at the beginning with a lot of training, and the weather was not all that nice in the beginning. So there were times that were not as expected — we’re not supposed to be peaking right in the beginning of our season.

“All of us are getting the times we want now. It’s definitely something that we’re really proud of as a team. To get this trophy is amazing.”

Olsen won 400 with a time of 61.07 seconds, a race that featured a spirited homestretch charge to rally for the win in the last 10 meters, and also ran legs on Gilmour’s winning 4x200 and 4x400.

“At the beginning of the season, I wasn’t running my best times,” Olsen said. “I was running like 64, 65, just because of the weather. But today, I kind of just wanted to get to the 60-61 range — just keep dropping my time. (May 1 in prelims,) I got a 62, so I wanted to just keep dropping my time. My strategy is to run how I’ve always been running since I was a little kid — just go out there and attack it.

“I always do, and last 100, my dad always tells me, ‘You find those numbers, and you always have to have a different mentality. You’ve got to think differently.’ The inside girls, I give those girls credit because they were passing me. I just didn’t want to let them win, considering this is my race. I didn’t want to let them win today, and I definitely wanted to go out there and attack that race.”

Katie Engle did much of the same in 1,600, attacking with a nice, hard back half to her run to punctuate a 2018 News-Herald coverage area-best 5:10.71.

“Yeah, it was very encouraging,” Engle said. “I was really looking forward to this meet, because I knew there was going to be a lot of good competition. I was really excited to run against them. Everyone did so well, and it was awesome to run that race.

“Every meet is different. We had beautiful weather today, which was really nice. The other meets have been really crappy, so it was nice to finally have a nice race.”

On the boys side, NDCL’s Karl King impressed in 1,600 with a 4:29.58, just the third area miler to crack 4:30 this spring. The junior was entrenched in a pack of four, but did nicely to hammer his first 25 on the gun lap and sped to a nice win from there.

“Two weeks ago (at the Trinity Invitational), I did the same exact thing,” King said. “I took it on the last lap, but what happened was I actually lost and I was in second. (Rocky River’s Jack McDonough) took me with about 250 meters left. What happened was I thought I could outkick him, but I just couldn’t.

“So my strategy this week was ride them until the last lap, kick it on the last lap and do whatever I could to stay in first. With 200 left, I could hear (Walsh Jesuit’s Nathaniel Ondrzcek) breathing down my neck, so I was just pumping as fast as I could.”

Coming soon

For more from this meet, check out track and field notes May 7 online and in the May 8 print edition.

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