Splish, splash: Shelby girls, Ontario boys win rainy MOAC meet
MARION — One hated it, the other embraced it.
Thursday’s soggy conditions aside, Shelby’s Princess Timko and Ontario’s Dean Morrison were kindred spirits when it came to beating everyone else across the finish line and helping their schools win team championships.
“It was horrible to get off the bus, which was nice and warm,” said Timko after winning the 100 and 200 dashes to help the Shelby girls claim their fourth straight Mid-Ohio Athletic Conference track and field crown at Marion Harding.
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“I don’t like to run in the rain, but I got it done. I had to push myself through it.”
Not Morrison. If only he could have given the day-long showers a big ol’ hug.
“Honestly, I learned to love the weather,” he said after winning the 1,600 and 3,200, the latter by .06 over Marion Harding’s Carter Ferguson. “It’s not always going to be nice out, especially during practice. So, I just had to trick myself into loving it. I love the rain. I love crappy weather.”
Morrison won the 1,600 in 4:33.58 and the 3,200 in 10:00.2. He also ran a leg on the winning 4 x 800 relay during Tuesday’s first session of the two-day meet.
Add in a sweep of the three sprint relays – 4 x100, 4 x 200 and 4 x 400 – and Ontario was able to hold off Galion 147-128 for the school’s first track championship, boys or girls, since joining the league in 2018.
“I wasn’t going for times today,” Morrison said. “I was going for placement. I was just trying to win.”
Last year, Timko didn’t get to compete in the MOAC because she missed half of the season with a hamstring issue. This year she’s making up for lost time and filling the void left when state-placing sprinter Ava Bowman suffered a season-ending injury.
“I definitely knew I had to step up,” Timko said. “With Ava, we scored a lot of points, and I had to make sure we kept getting them.”
Timko had a lot of help. She’s part of a strong stable of sprinters as Shelby won the 4x1 and 4x2. The Whippets also went 1-2 in the 800 thanks to Channon Cundiff (2:33.4) and Emma Montgomery (2:36.39) and got a first Tuesday from long-jumper Madison Henkel when all of the field events were staged.
Henkel’s winning leap of 17-9.5 was only a quarter-inch shy of the jump that earned her a fifth-place medal in last year’s state meet.
Former Ontario state champ and new head coach Rachel Miller was trying to lead her alma mater to the same title sweep Shelby pulled off last year. But even though Ontario’s Sasha Bulakovski won the 400 (1:03.26) and competed on the first place 4x4 (4:21.17), Shelby was able to hold off the Warriors’ title bid and prevail by a 135-118 margin.
The Galion boys had a big day on the oval. Sophomore Jacob Chambers swept the 100 and 200 in 10.85 and 23.27. Zachery Sallee won the 400 in 53.63 and also finished second in the 100 and third in the 200. And Linkon Tyrrell proved once again why he’s one of the top hurdlers in the area, winning repeat titles in the 110 highs (14.95) and the 300s (42.52).
This was the fourth time Tyrrell has cracked 15 seconds in the highs. He had his PR of 14.8 the week before at the Galion Invite.
Asked if he had ever competed in elements worse than Thursday, Tyrrell said, “My sophomore year, at (Sandusky) Perkins, up by the lake, it was like this with the rain, only about 30 degrees colder. That was no fun.”
Tyrrell is committing this coming week to Kent State, where he will be a decathlete. Given the way he navigated some wet spots on the track Thursday, maybe there will be some steeplechase in his future, too.
“We have a youth track program at Galion and (Linkon) always did that and liked it,” said his dad Matt Tyrrell, the Tigers’ sprint coach and also Galion’s athletic director. “He always liked hurdles and then all of a sudden he’s 6-3 and those races fit him real well.
“He started training in Columbus on Sundays with the Ohio Speed Academy with some really good coaches, and he likes it a lot.”
Linkon comes from a family of wrestlers. His dad and uncle, Brent, wrestled for Galion and Matt was an All-America at the University of Findlay. Brent is the head coach at Galion and Matt, the former head coach, is an assistant.
“It just didn’t stick (with me),” Linkon said of wrestling. “I did it when I was younger, up until my junior year, and then I switched to indoor track, which really changed things for me.”
Tyrrell was a state qualifier in the highs last year and this season he became the only new member of the 4x1 team that took seventh at state. He runs the leadoff leg in front of Chambers, Sallee and Gabe Ivy.
“We just revitalized the indoor track season the two years (under new head coach Ryan Scribner),” Matt Tyrrell said. “It hadn’t been very good since Todd Roston was coach a few years back.”
Champs from Tuesday included Clear Fork's Davis Hoeflich in the high jump (6-4) and Galion's Miranda Stone in both the shot put and discus.
This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Splish, splash: Shelby girls, Ontario boys win rainy MOAC meet
