For the Lake Mills boys’ and girls’ relay teams the problem wasn’t qualifying for the state meet, it was getting there that proved the most difficult part of their journey.

Both teams battled injuries all season and managed to persevere through pain and illness to qualify for the Iowa State Track and Field Meet held May 15 through May 17 at Drake Stadium in Des Moines, Iowa, but once they got there the boys nearly missed their chance to compete.

In the end the 4 x 400 meter relay team of sophomore Logan Strusz and seniors Jordan Krull, Dillan Sprecher and Steve Hengesteg won the first state track title for the Bulldogs since 1984, but it was almost all for naught as they barely made the preliminary race. The team had to leave the mall and showed up just in time to run the fastest relay in school history in the preliminaries May 15 after the meet progressed faster than they had anticipated.

“Our coach came in and said, ‘We have to go now,’ because they said they were an hour ahead of schedule,” Hengesteg said. “We just got out of the car, went to where we check in and about five minutes later we were running our race. I gave Logan the baton and he walked up with the first runners. He didn’t even stretch.”

It was probably for the best as the team came through with a time of 3 minutes 25.84 seconds that shattered the previous school record of 3:28.24 and sent the team to the finals.

The boys ran the finals the next day and narrowly averted disaster again.

Krull gave the team a strong lead on the second leg and he passed the baton to Sprecher who extended the lead further until he handed off to Hengesteg.

As he handed off to Hengesteg, he stepped on Hengesteg’s shoe, tearing a hole in the shoe and nearly sending Hengesteg to the ground. Sprecher hyperextended his knee on the exchange and said it was lucky it was the last race of the year.

The relay won with a time of 3:28.99, nearly a second faster than second-place finisher Northeast Hamilton.

The ending was almost fitting as the team had encountered difficulties all season long.

The team was lucky just to be together at the same time after Sprecher and Krull battled illness during the regular season and the weather canceled meets and valuable practice time.

Building a cohesive unit proved the biggest challenge the group faced. Krull missed nearly a month as he was stricken with double pneumonia and Sprecher dealt with the flu as the team struggled to find a fourth runner for a team that finished fourth at state the year before.

“I did not know if we would get much of anything,” coach Dan Rice said. “ I knew we would be strong, I didn’t know if we could win.”

Slowly as Krull’s and Sprecher’s health started to return the team started to show its potential as Strusz emerged as a strong runner. The relay posted the best time entering the state meet.

“We returned three guys and we just needed a fourth guy to fill that spot,” Sprecher said. “We found Logan Strusz who did a really good job.”

It was Strusz, who hadn’t even warmed up, that helped set the new record with a lead lap in the prelims that was a second faster than he had run all season long.

Stursz was picked join to the relay team, which finished fourth a year ago, after displaying the most potential, Rice said.

“He was a kid that got better and better,” Rice said.

Breaking a 27-year-old school record

The Lake Mills girls’ distance medley relay team of senior Sabrina Roll and juniors Sammy Nelson, Ali Dugger and Holly Buffington put together a gutsy seventh-place finish in the distance medley relay at the state meet and broke a 27-year-old school record.

“It’s kind of hard to believe that it’s that old, and it hasn’t been broken yet and now it is,” Roll said.

The distance medley, which consists of two 200 meter legs, a 400 and a 800, was an event the Bulldogs had never placed in before at the state meet.

“It was really exciting knowing that we had a chance to place at state,” Roll said. “When we go down and place at state normally it’s a 4 x 100 or a 4 x 200 or 4 x 400. It was fun because we’ve never had the distance medley place at state before.”

They added to the fun by breaking the previous school record by three seconds with a 4:20.21 in the final, but it was something the team might not have envisioned heading into the state meet.

Buffington sprained her ankle at the meet and ran in the finals with the injury. Dugger had a stress fracture in her shin and hadn’t even ran in the two weeks before the meet.

For this group breaking records is nothing new. Buffington set the school record in the long jump in the conference meet and the 4 x 800 relay has also broken the school record twice.

The distance medley team consisted of a group of seasoned state runners as each one had been to the state meet in an event other than the relay and they have their sights on more records next year.

“It would be fun to break a few more records,” Nelson said.