Tiger track team finishes 3rd at home meet

Published 2:10 am Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Despite missing two key contributors Tuesday, Albert Lea boys’ track and field coach Lisa Deyak said there were a lot of positives at the Tigers’ home meet.

Albert Lea finished third out of the three-team field with 30 1/2 points. Austin won the meet with 86 points and Mankato West took second with 68 1/2.

The Tigers were without senior Ethan Marquardt, who pulled a muscle in his hamstring, and Matt Tiegs who has a tight quad muscle.

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“I was very impressed,” Deyak said. “We had some very good performances.”

Tiegs competed in the 100-meter dash before sitting out the rest of the meet, but he was able to manage a second-place finish with a time of 11.6

With Marquardt and Tiegs on the sidelines others stepped in and performed well.

Trevor Rasmussen ran a gutsy 800-meter race. Rasmussen sat in second for the majority of the race but made a strong push in the final 50 meters to win the event with a time of 2 minutes, 7.1 seconds.

The 4×800 relay team of Rasmussen, Kyle Kriewall, Clayton Bratten and David Grano gave Albert Lea another first-place finish with its time of 8:42.4, to win by seven seconds.

The Tigers had a number of second-place finishes including Grano in the 1,600. He set a personal best in the race with his time of 4:51.

The 4×200 relay team of Kriewall, Bratten, Jordan Prescher-Smerud and Tyler Blake placed second with a time of 1:40.9 The 4×400 team of Kriewall, Rasmussen, Bratten and Prescher-Smerud took second with a time of 3:38.