Top times and broken records at the 70th Shawnee Mission North Relays

Piper senior Kaiti Lindstrom won the girls’ pole vault at the Shawnee Mission North Relays with a height of 11-feet, 6-inches. (Photo copyright 2022 by Brian Turrel)

by Brian Turrel

The 70th Shawnee Mission North Relays were held Friday afternoon, featuring elite high school track competition from the Kansas City area and around northeast Kansas.

Athletes from several Wyandotte County high schools qualified for the competitive meet, including Piper, Harmon, Wyandotte, Washington, Sumner Academy, Bishop Ward and Turner high schools.

The Piper Pirates figured heavily in the competition, winning two events and placing second in two others. The Piper boys placed fourth in the team competition, and the girls placed 12th.

Piper’s Kaiti Lindstrom won the girls’ pole vault with a vault of 11-feet, 6-inches, beating out Reece Baker, her 5A rival from Lansing. Lindstrom narrowly missed a follow-up attempt at 12 feet.

The Piper boys’ 4×100-meter relay team, the fastest in the state this season, also took first place at the meet. The team beat its own school record with a time of 41.87 seconds, less than a tenth off the meet record set by Schlagle in 1993.

Piper softball star Kylie Brockman placed second in the girls’ javelin throw and beat her own school record with a distance of 124-feet, 9-inches.

Grant Lockwood placed second and bettered his previous Piper school record time in the boys’ 800-meter dash at 1-minute, 54.04-seconds.

Wyandotte’s Jaquelyn Perez-Vela brought home some meet points for the Bulldogs by placing seventh in the girls’ 400-meter dash with a time of 59.86 seconds. She also placed 11th overall in the girls’ 100-meter dash.

A’luel Miller of Harmon and Mikayla Henry of Washington tied for ninth in the girls’ long jump with identical marks of 16-feet, 4 1/2-inches.

Seven meet records were broken at this year’s event, and a new Kansas record was set in the boys’ 400-meter run by William Jones of Blue Valley High School. Jones’s time of 46.29 seconds was also the second-best in the country this season.

The North Relays cap the regular season for most teams. League meets start this week, then regionals the following week. The state meet in Wichita will take place May 27 and 28.