The girls became more and more confident and the sectional was the best performance of the year for a lot of them.”

Colfay Pointer

ROCHELLE — The future is bright for the Rochelle Lady Hub track and field team, which turned in several strong individual performances during the IHSA 2A Sectional on Wednesday evening.

While the team score may not reflect the individual results, as the Lady Hubs finished 13th out of 16 schools with 32 points, five athletes recorded top-6 finishes in their respective events. Of those five athletes, only one will be graduating from this year’s varsity roster, meaning first-year head coach Colfay Pointer will have a large contingent of key contributors back next spring.

“I think our season was amazing and I thought we got better and better throughout the season,” Pointer said. “The girls became more and more confident and the sectional was the best performance of the year for a lot of them. We had multiple top-4 performances from girls who almost made it to the state meet. We had a small group of seniors who did a great job of leading our team, but we have a really young team and I’m excited to see them get back to it.”

Senior Kyra Bivins led Rochelle in the field events, finishing third in the discus with a PR of 33.41 meters and landing only 0.01 meters from reaching the state-qualifying mark. Junior Erin Murphy finished third in the shot put with a PR of 10.51 meters, while freshman Elyse Manning took fourth in the triple jump with a PR of 10.03 meters. Junior Dempsey Atkinson took sixth in the high jump with a clearance of 1.46 meters to round out Rochelle’s top field-event placers. Sophomore Samantha Overton finished 12th in the pole vault with a height of 2.06 meters.

“The sectional was the biggest meet ever for a lot of our girls including our freshmen,” Pointer said. “Our juniors will be the keys for keeping our younger girls motivated and firing them up. If we can combine our juniors with our younger girls who are getting faster and stronger, then we’ll have something to look forward to next year. I’m excited to see how all of that plays out.”

Rochelle’s strongest relay was a seventh-place finish in the 400-meter relay (Valerie Saldana, Zoe White, Ryelee Bogle and Elyse Manning) with a time of 53.70 seconds. The Lady Hubs took eighth in the 3200-meter relay (Mary Chadwick, Brisa Zepeda, Emely Hernandez and Bridgett Ramirez) with a time of 11:44.77 and ninth in the 1600-meter relay (Kyrie Cragin, Carmela Bright, Jasmine Walsh and Kylie Smith) with a time of 4:31.77. Rochelle finished 12th in the 800-meter relay (Alex Neece, Dempsey Atkinson, Reese Kissack and Katie Toczylowski).

Sophomores Annaliese Koziol and Rose Luxton led Rochelle in the distance events, with Koziol running a PR of 12:59.40 to finish seventh in the 3200-meter run and Luxton running a 5:56.45 to finish 11th in the 1600-meter run. Luxton also took 10th in the long jump with a mark of 4.38 meters. Freshman Jasmine Walsh was the leading hurdler for the Lady Hubs on Wednesday evening, finishing eighth in the 300-meter hurdles with a PR time of 52.86 seconds.

Sophomore Kyrie Cragin recorded the strongest finish in the sprinting events, taking fourth in the 400-meter dash with a time of 1:04.69. Freshman Elyse Manning finished 13th in the 100-meter dash with a time of 13.86 seconds, while juniors Alex Neece and Zoe White finished 18th and 19th in the 200-meter dash with respective PR times of 29.54 and 29.81 seconds. Junior Brisa Zepeda finished 19th in the 800-meter run with a PR time of 2:57.67.