FAM BOYS SECOND (BY SECONDS): FULL REPORT
In what was as dramatic a finish as you’ll ever see, Gregory passes FA/Marion boys in team standings in closing meters of final race to swipe the Class B title from the Bearcats.
By the time the early-afternoon hours of Saturday, May 25 rolled around, it was clear that the Freeman Academy/Marion boys were either going to emerge as the Class B champions or the runners-up at the three-day 2024 SDHSAA State Track and Field Championships held May 23, 24 and 25 in Sioux Falls.
Tied with Gregory at 49 points going into the final two events of the day — the open 200 and the 4×400-meter relay — each team had one last opportunity to score points, with FAM’s Keaton Preheim running the 200 and the Gorillas on the track in the 4×400, the final event of the day.
The Marion junior finished third in his final race of the day to give his team a 55-49 lead, as the final seconds of the last running event ticked away, it looked for all the world like the FAM boys were going to come away with the championship. Until they didn’t.
In what was just about the most dramatic finish to a chase for a title you will ever see, a last-ditch push in the final 50 meters of the 4×400 by Gregory anchorman Luke Stukel took the Gorillas from fourth to second, giving them the points they needed to leapfrog FA/Marion and claim their second consecutive Class B title.
Gregory finished with 57 points.
FA/Marion finished with 55.
“It was a great season — just heartbreaking at the end,” said coach Suzanne Koerner, who despite the disappointment that emerged in literally the closing seconds of the state meet said she is so proud of how far the team came this year.
“I was just talking to (coach) Jerico (Shape) and asked if he saw this coming at the beginning of the season, it was pretty emphatically ‘no,’” Koerner said. “It took a long time to work our way through some things.”
Indeed, it took the coaching staff and its relatively small group of runners a while to settle in, but by the time the third week of April rolled around, the Bearcats were beginning to connect the dots. They won the Great Plains Conference championship in Armour with relative ease on April 23, claimed the title at the Alcester-Hudson Invitational two weeks later and took third at the “last chance” Dan Clarke Relays hosted by Bridgewater-Emery May 16.
When it was all said and done the FA/Marion boys ended up cracking the SDHSAA Top-24 Performance List used to set the state-meet field in all five relays and eight open events, with their best athletes poised to put up a lot of points as the action unfolded late last week.
And that’s exactly what happened — it just didn’t happen to be quite enough to win the title. Still …
“It’s just an honor to be here,” said Shape, who is on staff at Marion and in his first season working with the Bearcats’ track program alongside Koerner and Billy Beseman. “To come out runner-up and to work for these guys, it’s been great. It’s been a lot of fun and I couldn’t be more proud of them.”
Setting the stage
Freeman Academy/Marion’s opportunity to accumulate points and contend for the title came courtesy of three runners — Preheim, fellow Marion junior Finley McConniel, and Tavin Schroeder, a senior from a home-schooled family from the Parkston area that attached itself to Freeman Academy thanks to an invitation from Josh Stahl starting with the 2013-14 school year.
McConniel went into the meet with the top time in the 3200 and second in the 1600; Preheim was second in the 100 and fourth in the 200; and Schroeder went in third in the 3200, eighth in the 1600 and 12th in the 800.
The Bearcats were also in the running for top-eight finishes in their relays thanks to contributions from other athletes, including FA senior Liam Ortman, Marion junior Dominic Sperling and Marion sophomores Jackson Donlan and Karter Weber.
And, for the most part, things went well as the action unfolded at Howard Wood Field.
The Bearcats were at the top of the leaderboard after the first day, with their 13 points coming from:
A second-place finish by the medley relay team of Sperling, Preheim, Weber and McConniel;
A fourth-place finish in the 4×800 by McConniel, Ortman, Donlan and Schroeder;
And a somewhat unexpected eighth-place finish in the long jump by Weber, who went into the competition 11th in the field but got on the podium thanks a PR in his opening jump.
“After that first day we had a good idea of where we were at — that if everything goes according to plan, we are going to win this thing,” said Ortman, who along with Schroeder were the only two seniors on the team. “It was all very exciting, but it was also nerve-wracking going into that second day, because we knew we were going to have to perform well.”
The Bearcats did.
Schroeder and McConniel both clocked PRs in the 3200 Friday morning and finished second and third, respectively, and the 4×200 relay team of Sperling, Ortman, Weber and Preheim that went into the meet ninth got through to the finals with the fifth-fastest clocking in the field, guaranteeing another medal — and precious points.
The FA/Marion boys were sitting second in the team standings at the end of the day on Friday, its 28 points tied with Gregory and just on the heels of Philip’s 31.5. But the team-leading Scotties had limited opportunities to score points on the final day of the competition — when all events are finals — and Ortman said the Bearcats were most concerned about Deubrook Area and Ipswich, both of which were in striking distance for a spot on the podium thanks to a combined 10 events on Saturday.
In fact, he said, even though the Bearcats were tied with Gregory at the end of the second day of competition, the Gorillas weren’t even on their radar.
“We had no idea — I had no idea — that Gregory was any good,” Ortman said.
But the Gorillas were lurking in the shadows on Saturday thanks to three competitors in a brand-new field event scored at state for the first time in 2024 — the javelin. And while all of Saturday’s action was unfolding on and around the track, in front of thousands of spectators, the javelin competition was quietly taking place on the far northwestern corner of the Howard Wood Field complex.
And wouldn’t you know it; Gregory finished 1-2-6 in the competition — largely because the javelin’s incoming best performer, Faulkton Area’s Spencer Melius, underperformed — accounting for 21 team points that catapulted the Gorillas from 28 to 49 points.
“Nobody pays attention to javelin,” said Ortman. “So all of a sudden you look at the scores and you’re like, ‘Holy smokes, they just put up 20 points; where did that come from?’
“It wasn’t until then that we knew that Gregory was going to be the issue.”
Saturday drama
Saturday went well for the Bearcats.
Preheim picked up six additional points with a third-place finish in the 100, McConniel and Schroeder finished third and sixth in the 1600 for another nine points, and the 4×200 relay team that had gone into the meet ninth in the field ended up fifth for four more points.
That put the Bearcats at 49 points, just like Gregory, with two events to go — the 200 featuring Keaton Preheim and the 4×400-meter relay featuring the Gorillas.
It was the perfect setup for a thrilling finish, and the track and field gods did not disappoint.
Preheim, who went into the competition fourth in the field but had clocked the fastest time in the prelim, finished third, giving the FA/Marion boys a 55-49 advantage over Gregory. But the Bearcats would need some help.
The Gorillas brought the fastest time in the field into the 4×400 relay, and a win or a second-place finish is all they needed to clip the Bearcats. A third would mean a tie for the title — something that happened in 2023 when Gregory and Ipswich both finished with 54 points. Anything lower than third would give FA/Marion its first state championship in program history and first ever for a team from Freeman Academy.
And for a while, for all the world it looked like the ledger would fall in favor of the Bearcats.
Gregory was running fourth in the final lap of that last race with just 50 meters to go when Stukel made his final push, picking up two places at the tail end of the competition to secure second place in the event and the Class B title for his team.
Gregory’s time of 3:28.12 was less than a half-a-second ahead of third place Timber Lake’s 3:28.25 and fourth place Wall’s 3:28.52.
“I was really hoping for their downfall,” said McConniel. “It sucks, but second place in Class B is pretty good and we have half the runners as them.”
“I want to say (my heartrate) was going about 150, 160 beats per minute,” Coach Shape said of watching Gregory in that 4×400 relay. “Felt like I couldn’t breathe there for a while, especially when there was that 100 left. That was just …”
Deubrook Area ended up third with 51.5 points while Ipswich was fourth with 49.
“A state title would be nice, but it doesn’t always happen and that’s OK,” said Schroeder, who set PRs in both the 1600 and 3200 to finish higher than his incoming seed in both races to help give the Bearcats a crack at the team title. “That was my first time going sub-10:00 in the 2-mile so I was really happy with that.”
Lasting perspectives
Really, the entire boys team should be happy with how the season turned out and how far they came from the start of the spring. All three coaches acknowledge that.
“Everybody worked hard to be ready for moments like this,” Shape said. “It took everybody, from coaches to athletes being disciplined and getting the rest they need. To come here and put on a show like this and be in the running right until the end, you couldn’t ask for anything more.”
“A lot of hard work,” said Billy Beseman, another assistant coach for the FAM boys, when asked to summarize the season. “With the weather, with living in South Dakota and the wind, it was a slow start to the season, but everyone kept their focus, kept the faith, and it was fun seeing everything come together very quickly at end of the season.”
As for the team effort that fell just short, it’s easy to look back at the “what-ifs.” Had McConniel finished second instead of third in the mile — he got edged by 0.02 — the Bearcats would have scored eight points instead of six.
“I swore I was in front of him,” said McConniel. “But it happened; you can’t go back.”
Had McConniel caught Gregory in the sprint medley relay instead of finishing second by 0.37 — that’s a four point swing.
Had Preheim finished second in the 200 instead of third — his spot going into the final — it would have been a two-point swing in favor of FAM.
And had the boys finished better than fourth in the 4×800 — which they believed they could — it might have made the difference.
“There’s a whole bunch of different situations you can look back on over the entire meet and be like, ‘Well if we had done this, or this other thing had happened, we would have won it,’” said Ortman. “It’s crazy to think about.”
Ortman and Schroeder both said goodbye to prep athletics on Saturday, and both have nothing but great things to say about competing for the Bearcats.
“It’s been a real joy,” said Schroeder, who is going on to run at Dordt University in Sioux Center, Iowa. “I’ve really enjoyed running with Finley; we ran pretty much everything together this season and I’m really going to miss it.”
Schroeder also gave a shout-out to his coaches, including Koerner, who has helped build both him and McConniel into multiple state medal-runners in the sport of cross-country, as well. “Suzanne has been one of the best coaches I have ever had and Billy has been great, too. I wouldn’t pick anyone else over them.”
“It’s been a blast — an absolute blast,” said Ortman. “They’re all great guys; they’re a lot of fun to run with and play sports with. I’ve played multiple sports with most of them. It’s very much a brotherhood. There’s never been a year where I’ve regretted doing this.
“And they’ll be fun to watch next year,” he continued. “They’ll be right there at the end and it’s probably going to be Gregory and us again. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens.”
Indeed, look for the FAM boys to come out both strong and highly motivated in 2025. In addition to McConniel, Preheim, Sperling and Weber, the Bearcats will return two others who competed in individual evets at state last week: Donlan in the high jump and freshman Domani Butler in the 300 hurdles.
“We lose two solid kids, but the others are going to be that much stronger as they get a year older,” said Koerner. “And having tasted this makes it a real thing — not just a pipe dream, but something that’s achievable.”
