(Oakland) Coming off of back-to-back meet wins, the Riverside girls track team returns to action Thursday at AHSTW.
The Lady Dawgs were team champs at the Griswold meet last week and topped the field at their home meet on Tuesday. Among the key teams they’ll face is Western Iowa Conference foe Underwood, which is coming off of a strong showing in Denison on Tuesday. “A lot of the normal teams we have seen I’m excited to see if we can improve against them. But also I think we’ll see some teams like Underwood for the first time. They are always a pretty solid team, so I’m excited to get out there and see how we stack up against them.”
Coach Jared Hoffman’s lineup is still a work in progress, but thankfully in their case they have plenty of good options to plug and play. “We’ll always try to make some moves as the season goes along. We are trying to get some stuff into Drake, so we’ll put the best that we can together for those and try to get a set lineup towards the end of the year so we can get ready for Districts.”
The 4X100 is one event they feel good about among others. “Looking at Varsity Bound we are looking okay for the 4X100. We still have to drop some time. We have three of the girls from the state medal team a year ago with Veronica Andrusyshyn, Lydia Erickson, and Emma Gordon. Then Elly Henderson has been starting that race for us. We also ran a pretty good Sprint Medley. We’ll still have to drop time on that with those same four again. The 4X200 we are still trying to figure that out, but that team ha run a good time.”
Something that makes this Lady Dawgs team dangerous is not just their talent, but their versatility. They have athletes that can help the team in a lot of different ways. “Very valuable. For example, Elly Henderson Tuesday night started our Sprint Medley, then ran on our 4X800, and started our 4X100. Having that versatility to do all that is pretty good. We have some girls that have picked up some hurdling and are doing well in that.”
Thursday’s meet in Avoca is scheduled to start at 4:30.
Riverside coach Jared Hoffman:
