Monroe City’s Williams, Highland’s Stark capture titles on first day of state track championships

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Monroe City’s Emmalee Williams had a comfortable margin but she never felt it.

The senior won the Class 2 800-meter run during the opening day of the Missouri state track and field championships Friday at Licklider Track at Jefferson City High School.

Williams led from the start and won in 2 minutes, 19.85 seconds to secure the Panthers’ seventh ever running title on the girls side. She beat a pair of decorated all-state runners in Blue Eye’s Riley Arnold and Brookfield’s Alex Sharp.

“I knew I had to pick it up,” Williams said. “There has been many times there is a girl coming on you and you don’t know so I had to act like someone was coming up and chasing me the entire run. To me, I had to act like someone was on my heels.”

However, Williams had a comfortable margin compared to Arnold (2:22.12) and Sharp (2:23.27) even if she didn’t feel it.

This race put her at the peak of the event after taking second as a freshman and then third last year. She is the first Panther to win an individual running title since Carly Spalding won the 100-meter dash in 2012.

“I feel like I made my parents proud and really that is my number one goal,” she said.

Monroe City added two more medals on the day.

Senior Carly Youngblood was the leader of the pole vault at one point but finished second by jumping 3.35 meters to come in behind Butler’s Annalee Gardner.

In the triple jump, sophomore Waylon DeGrave finished third by going 13.30 meters.

The boys 4×100  relay (third) and 4×400 (fourth) both qualified for the finals on Saturday.

Highland’s 4×200 boys relay took fourth to move on, but the 4×100-meter team was ninth and didn’t qualify for the finals.

The Cougars will have Drew Mallett in the finals of the 100 dash (seeded fifth) and 200-meter dash (first) and Robert Goehl in the 110 hurdles (third).

The highlight of the day for Highland was junior Shon Stark winning the Class 2 discus.

He didn’t qualify for the event out of sectionals last year but threw 50.58 meters to win, becoming only the fourth state champion from his school in boys track and field.

“It feels amazing, there is nothing like it,” Stark said. “I worked so hard in the offseason. I’m just glad it paid off. I was dedicated and I knew if I had fun today, I would come out on top.”

Senior Delaney Straus had Marion County tied for fifth place with 10 points after day one.

The Culver-Stockton College track and basketball pledge placed in two events and came up short in a third.

“I’m a little disappointed today compared to past years, but the times are definitely accurate with what I got this season,” Straus said of a year when the Mustangs competed in only six of 12 events due to rain forcing cancellations.

In the 1,600, she took fifth with a time of 5:38.13. She led after the first lap and ultimately fell back when passed by a pair of underclassmen.

“It’s very tough, very tough, but I’ve been that freshman that came in and blew everybody out of the water before. So I understand. I understand that,” she said. “There’s new competition. I understand that the young kids are coming in all hyped up because it’s their first state meet so I mean, I’ve been on the other side of being the old one now.

“Yes, it’s very weird, very weird, but next year I’ll be the young one again, so hopefully we’ll do some more damage there. In the 1,600, I felt OK. My time doesn’t really tell what I think I’m capable of. But again, I just feel like I was really underprepared throughout the season.”

She took ninth in the 800 run, coming up just short of another all-state accolade. She was in third place after the opening 400 meters.

Then she took part in the triple jump and placed third overall, coming up shy of matching her school record. She finished with a distance of 10.30 meters.

“I’m not too upset about that one, especially being that I had already ran the 1,600 and the 800 before I did the finals,” she said. “But I still managed to pull that one out.”