Lansing Catholic boys capture 2nd track and field state title in school history

KENT CITY – As the Division 3 track and field state finals entered the home stretch Saturday, Lansing Catholic coach Tim Simpson glanced at the boys leaderboard. The way he figured it, the championship likely would come down to the 4x400 meter relay.

He wouldn’t have scripted it any other way.

“The 4x400 relay, that’s our biggest thing,” Simpson said. “It’s what we talk about all the time. So when all the chips fell into place and we said, ‘We have to win the 4x400 to win (the state title),’ I said, ‘Well, we’re gonna win.’ ”

The coach’s words were prescient: The Cougars won the 4x400 relay — their only event win of the day — to best Saugatuck by a single point, 38-37, and capture the state championship.

And Lansing Catholic won the deciding race in dramatic, come-from-behind fashion.

Trailing Hamady High after the second leg, senior David Pruder pushed Lansing into the lead in the third. He handed off the baton to fellow senior Josh Otten, who finished with a flourish to give the Cougars the win in 3:25.91 — the team’s best time of the season.

When Pruder surged ahead, Simpson knew victory was at hand.

“As I watched him pull up and pass the (leading guy),” Simpson said, “I turned and said, ‘It’s over.’ ”

After the trophy presentation, the entire team jogged around the track, the plaque held aloft. Leading the celebratory jog were the two key pieces of the championship, Otten and Pruder.

Aside from the relay team’s victory, Otten placed second in the 400-meter dash (in a personal record time of 50.19) and third in the 1,600 meters (another personal record mark of 4:20.37), while Pruder took third in the 800 meters, clocking a personal best of 1:56.78. The boys’ 4x800 meter relay team — which featured Owen Spence and Stephen Fair along with Otten and Pruder — also earned runner-up honors with a time of 8:13.15.

“It feels awesome,” Otten said. “Last year, I had an OK (performance) at state, but this year, I’m really, really happy about how I did today.”

Otten even thought, had the day's schedule done him any favors, he might have been able to walk away with first place in the 400, where he lost to Richmond's Evan Green by four-tenths of a second. That race immediately followed the 1,600, which had taken its toll on Otten.

"My legs were still recovering midrace in the 400," he said. "That was rough. But I’m not at all disappointed in how I did.”

Saturday's triumph marks Lansing Catholic’s second boys track and field state championship, 10 years after its first title in 2012.

Pewamo-Westphalia’s girls’ squad came up just short of its third consecutive state crown. (P-W won the 2019 and 2021 championships, while the 2020 event was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.) The Pirates finished Saturday with 39 points, which wasn't enough to overtake Hart High's 63.

Despite not ending atop the team leaderboard, P-W coach Scott Werner said he couldn't find any fault with the girls' effort Saturday.

"Every team is different," Werner said. "This is a new team. It's different from last year. We've got a lot of new faces. A lot of kids got to experience the state finals for the first time. They're rising to the level we expect."

Few rose to the occasion like Saige Martin. At last year's state finals, Martin, then a freshman, finished second to a senior runner in the 100-meter hurdles; she was third, behind two more seniors, in the 300-meter hurdles.

With those upperclassmen gone, Martin ascended to the top in both events Saturday, posting career-best marks (15.23 in the 100, 46.24 in the 300) in each race.

Those finishes last season, she said, boosted her self-esteem. But it was a double-edged sword: entering both races as an overwhelming favorite, the sophomore star admitted she felt the pressure to perform Saturday.

“You definitely think about it, for sure," she said. "It's really internal. But you also have to believe in yourself, like, ‘I know I can do this.’ You play a lot of mind games with yourself.”

She's never alone, though.

“Support is what really carries me through: your friends, your family, your teammates, your coaches," Martin said. "When other people are rooting for you, it just makes you feel really good.”

Another standout individual who more than met the massive expectations surrounding her was Ithaca's Lani Bloom. A Purdue signee, Bloom won four regional titles heading into the state finals. But she only ran two events Saturday — the 800 meters and 1,600.

She won both with ease, timing season bests in both: 2:11.86 in the 800 (second-place Madison Osterberg of Jackson Lumen Christi finished in 2:16.01) and 4:49.60 in the 1,600 (her closest competitor was Hart's Audrianna Enns, who wrapped up in 4:56.71).

Bloom admitted it would have been a disappointment not to win both events. But she also said it isn't as easy as she made it look.

"There are so many incredible girls in Division 3," she said. "It's so intense. It's a really great honor to win, but I was going to try to be happy no matter what."

Though she entered as the fourth seed in the 3,200 meters, Bloom sat out the event. She wanted her teammate, Rachael Sierakowski, to have the spotlight.

"She deserves to shine the same as I do," Bloom said of Sierakowski, who placed eighth in the event. "I just wanted to celebrate her."

Aside from P-W, the only area school to record a top-10 finish on the girls leaderboard was Ithaca, which finished sixth with 27 points. Lansing Catholic had a notable individual showing, however, as Hannah Pricco placed third (58.56) in the 400-meter dash.

Behind Lansing Catholic, the next-best area finisher on the boys leaderboard was Pewamo-Westphalia with 30 points, which was good enough for fourth. Ovid-Elsie earned 10 points, thanks to Tryce Toker's victory in the pole vault. Laingsburg scored nine points, highlighted by Jack Borgman's third place in the pole vault.

P-W might have carved out a more prominent place on the boys leaderboard if not for Benny Diaz. The Saugatuck superstar, a Michigan signee, won the 100, the 110 hurdles and the 300 hurdles. P-W's Corey Schafer settled for second in both hurdling events.

Short of running a perfect race himself, and possibly needing help from Diaz, Schafer conceded he knew he was running for second.

"I’ve just kind of come to terms with that. He’s an amazing athlete. He’s so fast," Schafer said. "I had a little hope in the 300. I was thinking maybe I could get him in that one. He just ran a great race and I couldn’t quite get him.”

Yet it's the lone race Diaz didn't win, the 200 meters, that opened the door for Lansing Catholic's championship. Diaz pulled up short during the race and limped to the medical tent; his ninth-place finish, out of nine runners, netted no points for Saugatuck.

Funny how that works, Simpson said, alluding to the mantra that every single point matters in tightly contested track meets.

"When you win by one," Simpson said, "anything that happened during the day is the crucial thing.”

Contact Ryan Black at rblack@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @RyanABlack.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Lansing Catholic boys win track and field state title