Both Lawrence High and Free State will have athletes competing against each other in the Kansas Relays today and Saturday, but neither team considers this a city showdown of any sort.
Free State coach Steve Heffernan said that for many of the athletes, today marks the start of the biggest meet of the year.
“This is more competitive than the state meet,” he said.
Heffernan knows this as well as anybody. His boys 4X800-meter relay squad has won the Kansas Class 6A title the last four years in a row, but hasn’t managed to earn a Kansas Relays championship.
“There’s usually an out-of-state team that slips past us,” Heffernan said.
In recent years, high school teams from Colorado, Texas and Oklahoma have come in and conquered the 4X800, and Heffernan is unsure what teams might show up this time.
Lawrence coach Scott Stidham agree that his team would face the stiffest competition of the year this weekend.
“This is the toughest meet in the Midwest,” Stidham said. “If you place here, you’ve accomplished a lot.”
He added that, despite the level of competition, his team was in it for the experience and not to shatter any records.
“Traditionally we don’t do anything really special here because it’s the middle of the season and we’re not training for this,” Stidham said. “We try to put together a lot of relays and we’ve surprisingly placed high in relays that we didn’t think would place high.”
One girl to look out for is LHS pole vaulter Chelsea Ornburn. She was last year’s class 6A state runner-up, vaulting to a 10-foot-6-inch mark. This year, she’s vaulted 9-6.
Lawrence’s Amy Magnuson also could be a factor in the Relays. She’s keeping busy, competing in the 100-meter hurdles, long jump and triple jump.
But both coaches agreed that the actual competition at the Kansas Relays was just on part of the whole experience of competing in a big track meet.
“I told our kids to go compete and just see what you can do, because it’s a great facility and a great opportunity to run against great athletes,” Stidham said.
High school action gets underway today at 8 a.m. today with the boy’s javelin and the girl’s shot put.
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