Girls state track notebook: AGWSR 4x800 girls 2nd

DES MOINES – AGWSR sophomore Ali Gerbracht handed off the baton to Aubrie Fisher for the final leg of Thursday's 4x800 1A state championship race with the Cougars running fourth.
 
Not even two hours had passed since Fisher's first race, a hard-fought fifth-place finish in the 3,000 that required a kick in the final 50 meters. Gerbracht said she figured that there wasn't much more Fisher could do to improve the Cougars' standing.
 
But then again...
 
"Well, this is Aubrie Fisher," Gerbracht said. "She can do almost anything."
 
Sure enough, Fisher found that next gear and delivered the Cougars' a runner-up finish in the 3,200-meter relay in 10:06.82.
 
Central Elkader won the race in 10:02.02. The finish for the quartet of Mandy Willems, Haley Bakker, Gerbracht and Fisher bested a sixth-place finish for AGWSR in last season's 4x800 state race. 
 
"I knew I had something to work for," Fisher said. "I had to be mentally strong. ... It's great to get that high of a place because it shows that these girls worked hard and it paid off."
 
Gerbracht knew what it meant to be one of the new members on the quartet a year after the sixth-place team.
 
"You knew how much potential they had," Gerbracht said of Bakker and Fisher. "We wanted to meet that and get us where we're at today. ... It doesn't seem real. We knew we wanted to be up here but never thought we'd be second place."
 
Thursday was also a send-off for Willems and Bakker as their unique whirlwind state experiences come to a close.
 
"I felt good," Bakker said. "It was really exciting to see Aubrie catching her at the end. ... Second place is excellent."
 
Fisher held off Kee's Katie Brennan at the finish line in the 3,000 earlier in the morning to earn her first medal of the day in a fifth-place finish in 11:00.25. Bedford's Emma Lucas won the race in 10:04:31.
 
"I didn't know if I could hold her off," Fisher said. "You need to stay mentally tough, that heat gets to you, makes you think you're more tired than you are."
 

Grundy Center's Kyah Luhring finished fifth in the 1A long jump. (Jake Ryder/The Grundy Register)
 
Grundy Center's Kyah Luhring earned her second long jump state medal with a fifth-place finish in the 1A girls long jump. Her best jump of the day was a 16-foot, 10.75-inch leap on the last jump of the finals, which brought her up from eighth.
 
"I knew there were a lot of good jumpers in both flights and whichever jump I had to go reach, I had to go get it," Luhring said. "I just wanted to make sure I hit the board like always."
 
Luhring was also 11th in the 200 prelims in 26.66, her first time running the open 200 at state.
 
Notes
 
BCLUW: The girls shuttle hurdle team of Kiersten Kruse, Payton Pekarek, Lizzie Garber and Olivia Hughes finished 10th in 1:11.16 in the prelims, missing out on a top-8 spot in the finals. ... Erin Asche threw 32 feet, 7.75 inches to take 22nd in the girls shot put.
 
D-NH: Freshman Jadyn Bennett was 18th in the 400-meter dash final in a time of 1:03.33.
 
Gladbrook-Reinbeck: Lily Ehlers was 19th in the girls 3,000, finishing the race in 11:48.95.
 
Grundy Center: Hailey Wallis was 14th in the 100-meter dash prelims in 13.15 and did not qualify for the finals.