(Oakland) The Riverside boys track team competes Tuesday at Tri-Center.
The Bulldogs were meet champions in their last competition. Coach Alex Oliver’s squad scored 155 points for a team title at AHSTW on Thursday. “We knew it was going to be tough. We had some guys out of the lineup.” Coach Alex Oliver says, “We had some younger guys step up and fill some roles. Brody and Dawson Henderson both came out really competed hard and scored some points for us. Mason McCready stepped up. Another senior, Hayden Hensley ran three or four races and scored point in all of them for us. Kyler Rieken has been scoring for us all season, but these are the guys that are realizing they can contribute too and it’s kind of contagious once you get it going.”
The team got off to a good start in field events. “I was happy seeing Nate Messerschmidt start to score some field event points for us. He came out and won the discus and threw a season best and then in shot put he came back and got 2nd. That’s a huge jump start for our day.”
Ayden Salais had a big meet, winning the 400 in 51.05, anchoring the first place 4X400, placing 2nd by less than one hundredth of a second in the 200 at 23.34, and jumping 18-10 to take 2nd in the long jump. “Ayden put out some good times. He went just over 51, I really thought he was going to be faster than that just watching his effort. He controlled the open 4. Kind of came back a little bit tight in the open 2. I don’t know how much he lost by, but it had to be a really close margin since they had the same exact time on the board. Anchored us to a really strong 4X4 at the end. Like a senior should do, when it’s time to win a meet, when it’s time to win a race you go with your fastest people and get it taken care of.” Salais has gone as low as 50.88 which is 5th best in Class 1A for the 400.
Riverside got the win, by five points over AHSTW, despite the fact they were missing some key pieces. “The goal is always to have as much depth and as talented of depth as possible.” Oliver says, “When you have depth and younger guys it’s fun to see their growth.”
The week ahead brings a meet on Tuesday (4/11) at Tri-Center and on Friday (4/14) they travel to Underwood. Coach Oliver says Friday will have some loaded competition which should help lower times and they’ll attempt to get some things qualified for the Drake Relays.
Riverside coach Alex Oliver:
