Harden named Lenawee County Girls Track and Field Coach of the Year
TECUMSEH — In the Tecumseh gymnasium there are boards for every sport lining the walls of the indoor track.
The girls track and field portion currently sits empty, but won't for long as the program claimed a couple of titles this spring.
"I've been at Tecumseh for six or seven years now and there are no records up there," said head coach Wes Harden.
Harden and his team swept the Southeastern Conference White Division season and won the league meet to claim the first conference title before also winning a Division 2 regional championship.
For his guidance, with the help of his assistants Thomas Harden and Andy Ewing and many others, Wes Harden has been named the Lenawee County Girls Track and Field Coach of the Year.
"It's an honor because there are a lot of good teams in the area," Harden said.
When the season began, the staff and athletes knew the team was going to be good and hoped to compete with the likes of Chelsea and Pinckney.
It didn't take long for everyone to know how serious this Tecumseh team was after it took second overall in the SEC Invite to start the year finishing behind only Saline of the SEC Red Division.
After topping Jackson and Adrian, Tecumseh's next SEC White foes were Pinckney and Chelsea, along with Ypsilanti.
The team beat Pinckney at home by 11 points before crushing Ypsilanti and beating the Bulldogs by 16 on their home track.
Tecumseh doubled down on its efforts in Chelsea and returned to the home of the Bulldogs and beat them again, this time by 8.5 points.
If there was any more doubt if Tecumseh was the best team around, at the regional meet in Milan it topped second place Monroe Jefferson by 25 points.
"Going into the season we expected to be good," Harden said. "We had to put it all together and we held our own to have a successful year in our conference. It was all of us working together."
Of the 17 events, Tecumseh won eight SEC White titles, five Division 2 regional titles and had junior Jordyn Wright win the state Division 2 title in the pole vault as the team took 14th.
Wright ended up with a height of 12-feet at the state meet, which broke her own school record. She also set the mark for the county meet at 11-feet-9-inches and took first or second in every meet.
"She is a a great asset to our team," Harden said. "She loves it. She is really excited about pole vault and progressing really well. She kind of hit a wall with no real challenge until the state meet."
The junior has a new goal in mind now, breaking the Division 2 state meet record, which she barely missed this season.
Wright wasn't the only athlete to break a school record for Tecumseh this spring.
Dakota Schlorf broke the 100-meter record (12.70) and Chesney Wilke broke the 800 record (2:16.06). Gabby Stintzi, Schlorf, Wright and Brianna Rhodea broke the 4x200 record (1:46).
Tecumseh will look to one up those records and break a few more, while perhaps adding a few more numbers to the board in the gym, as the entire team minus Stintzi and Emily Peterson will be returning.
"We have a lot of juniors to be seniors," Harden said. "Our numbers are at 28, so we're doing really well. We're going to challenge everyone to get out and do a winter sport or condition."
This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Tecumseh's Harden earns Lenawee County Girls Track and Field Coach of the Year
