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Ely eighth grader, four-by-400 group both place second in 7A
Youth and experience made for a state-qualifying day for Ely’s high school girls track team.
Violet Udovich continued a breakout eighth-grade season and placed second in the 400 meter dash at the Section 7A meet last week, punching her own ticket to state.
Udovich and her cousin, ninth-grader Lydia Shultz, then joined forces with Ely seniors Sarah Visser and Grace LaTourell to form a second-place and state-advancing four-by-400 Both were set to compete at state Thursday, after deadline, at St. Michael-Albertville.
The second-place section finishes were the highlights of a good day at sections for the Ely girls, who were ninth in a 22-team Section 7A field at the May 30 event on the campus of the University of Minnesota-Duluth.
Udovich, who was coming off a victory in the 400 at the subsection meet, was second only to Two Harbors’ Trinity Giddings and wound up the runner-up with a time of 1:01.21.
To close the meet out, she joined Shultz, Visser and LaTourell on a fourby- 400 group that finished in 4:15.57, edging past a Moose Lake-Willow River combination by less than a second.
The Wolves’ next-highest individual finisher was another young athlete - freshman Kaylin Visser.
She took fourth in the discus with a throw of 100 feet, six inches. After longer throws earlier in the season, Visser was bedeviled by an injury that limited her postseason run.
Ely freshman Molly Brophy, meanwhile, placed fifth in the 1,600 run (5:33.81) with eighth-grader Mattie Lindsay also scoring in the same event with an eighthplace run of 5:45.69.
The Wolves’ next-best relay was in the four-by-200, with LaTourell, Larson, Shultz and Udovich teaming up to place fourth in 1:51.30, and within a second-and-a-half of the top spot.
Shultz took seventh in the high jump (4-8), and the Wolves had several others in field events.
Sarah Visser placed 12th in the triple jump (29-3.75) and teammate Rachel Carter, a junior, was 12th in both the shot put (26-4.5) and discus (76-8).
Addison Forsman wound up 14th in the long jump (13-5).
Also placing for Ely were Lindsay (300 hurdles, 11th, 54.21) and seventh-grader Miriam Messerschmidt (200 dash, 14th, 29.58).
