Drexel’s Joey Jacobs bringing home gold from Missouri Class 1-2 track meet

Drexel’s Joey Jacobs barely missed winning a medal during the first day of the Missouri Class 1-2 state track meet. On Saturday, he made sure he wouldn’t go home empty-handed.

Jacobs won the Class 1 boys discus title, unleashing a throw of 152 feet, 7 inches at Jefferson City High School. He fell shy of his personal best of 156-3, but after suffering through placing ninth in the shot put the day before, wasn’t about to complain.

“I came in wanting to redeem myself for that one,” said Jacobs, who placed third in the discus and seventh in the shot last year as a junior.

Redemption came on his final throw in preliminaries, which nobody could touch in the final round. While Jacobs knew he had a good throw, he wasn’t quite convinced it was a winner at the time.

“I thought there’s a chance it would, but I was a little nervous,” Jacobs said.

Midway’s Richardson first javelin champ

The record book will now list Midway senior Peyton Richardson as the Class 1 state meet record holder in the boys javelin.

That’s because he’s the first and only Class 1 boys javelin champion.

An exhibition event the last two years, the javelin became an official event this season, and Richardson took the Class 1 boys title Saturday with a 167-9 toss that will serve as the record. He reached that distance on his last throw of the day, and it came after he had already secured the title.

“I already knew that I was a state winner,” Richardson said. “So I just kind of reached back and threw, and I threw my farthest.”

Richardson just took up the javelin last year, when most Missouri schools started picking up the event knowing it would soon become part of the state meet. In that short time, he reached a personal-best of 170 feet as well as winning a state title.

“I got pretty good at it,” Richardson said.

Orrick’s one-girl team scores

The Class 1 girls team standings show Orrick finishing 20th with 16 points. What it doesn’t show is that one girl accounted for all of those points.

Orrick senior Madison Fulte did the one-girl team thing last year as a junior, but she only qualified for the finals in one event. This time Fulte made it to four finals and medaled in all of them.

After finishing fourth in the high jump Friday, Fulte spent Saturday taking sixth in the triple jump, fifth in the 100-meter hurdles and fifth in the 300-meter hurdles. She set personal bests in all but the 300 hurdles, and came close to recording one there.

“This year was definitely a huge change going through all the finals,” Fulte said. “It was really nice.”

And unlike last year, Fulte did have some company. Sophomore Conner Greer qualified in the discus from Orrick’s four-member team.

“Half of our team made it to state this year, actually,” Fulte said.

Big debut

University Academy Charter freshman Ariyonna Baston made her first state meet one to remember with a second-place finish in the Class 2 girls 200-meter dash. Baston, the No. 3 qualifier in Friday’s preliminaries, finished in 25.76 seconds. Hanna Williams of Plattsburg was first in 25.29.

Baston, whose final time was a personal best, admitted to some butterflies before her first state final.

“When I got in the blocks I was nervous, but I always remember what my teammates and my coach says: Take off hardest, and when you get to the straightaway pump your arms,” Baston said. “And that’s what I did.”

Other notables

▪ West Platte senior Sydney Oberdiek won the Class 1 girls discus. Oberdiek had a winning throw of 129 feet, 8 inches.

▪ Wellington-Napoleon took first in the Class 1 boys 1,600 relay. Jordon Hill, Scout Shaberg, Duncan Hughes and Dylan Brockmeyer raced to the title in 3:32.25.

▪ Khristen Bryant of Columbia Independent School set a new all-class record in the Class 1 girls pole vault. Bryant won it with a vault of 13-0, breaking the 12-10  1/2 mark set by Nicole Kallenberger of Lee’s Summit West in 2015.