USC boys 6th

Published 12:00 am Monday, May 19, 2003

BLAINE &045; All season, the United South Central boys’ track and field team was rated between sixth and eighth in the state Class A True Team poll.

That rating was based on the Rebels being illness and injury free. They were neither on Saturday. But they found a way to make up for it.

The Rebels turned in a strong performance to finish sixth in the True Team state meet at the National Sports Center in Blaine.

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Plainview was first with 460.5 points. The Rebels had 311 and Maple River, which beat USC in the section meet, took eighth with 268.5.

&uot;I was really pleased with our performance,&uot; said coach Kent Viesselman. &uot;We’re a very young team, and I feel they handled the pressure of being in the state meet very well. In view of our illness/injury situation, we got everything we had coming.&uot;

Coming up big was the 4×100-meter relay team of Shea Kaiser, Callan Pitcher, Bob Schmitz and Jon Voigt, which got USC’s lone first in a season-best 45.03 seconds.

The best events for the Rebels were the 100, where Voigt and Kaiser finished second and fifth, and the 400, in which Schmitz and Kaiser went 4-5.

Other strong individual places were Adam Kruger’s third in the discus and third in the pole vault by Voigt.

The Rebels’ other places: Schmitz, fourth, 200; Voigt, eighth, 200; Chris Vondracek, ninth, 800 and 17th, high jump; Jake Stenzel, 10th, 800; Justin Youngblom, 16th, 1600; Matt Mueller, 17th, 1600; Eric Youngblom, eighth, 3200 and 15th, high jump; Spencer Niebuhr, 14th, 3200 and 11th, pole vault; Steven Wood, eighth, 110 hurdles and eighth, 300 hurdles; Pitcher, 17th, 110 hurdles, fifth, 300 hurdles and 14th, long jump; Kaiser, sixth, long jump; Schmitz, 12th, triple jump; Simon Christenson, 18th, triple jump; Kruger, fifth, shot put; Matt Linder, 16th, shot put; and Randy Kauffmann, 11th, discus.

The Rebels host the sub-section meet at Wells Thursday.