Ephrata Girls Start Strong

Ephrata’s Jennie Young picked up speed as she hit the turn of the 200-meter dash Monday at Eagle Stadium in Denver. The clouds that brought morning showers had broken, and a late-afternoon sun sent a mid-season warmth to the Lancaster-Lebanon League Section Two track and field opener between the Mountaineers and host Cocalico.

“You kind of expect the beginning to be a little cold,” Young said, “but there wasn’t much wind, so it felt good to come down that stretch.”

Young shot through the second half of the 200, finishing at 25.6 seconds to collect her second individual victory of the day. Ephrata’s Kyra Horst (28.5) and Olamide Fatusin took second and third place in the 200 to help Mounts along their way to a 113-37 team victory over their backyard rivals.

Cocalico won the boys meet, 84-62 behind Demetri Whitsett’s victories in the 110-meter high hurdles (16.6), 300-meter intermediate hurdles (43.3) and long jump (20-5.75).

Back on the girls side, Young sets tone in sprints.

“I wasn’t expecting that,” Ephrata coach John Keller said of the point disparity in the girls score, “but I think as this season progresses, our girls have the potential to be a pretty good track team. Obviously, we have a long way to go.”

Young scored her first victory of the afternoon in the 100-meter dash, pulling ahead of Horst and Cocalico’s Julia Sensenig to finish at 12.8. She also joined Horst, Faith Hershberger and Elizabeth Martin in Ephrata’s 4x100meter relay team that finished, unopposed in 52.0.

“Jennie Young,” Keller said, “she came out and had a pretty good day today,”

Aside from her two second-place finishes for the Mounts (1-0), Horst clocked in at 17.6 to win the 100-meter high hurdles before Ephrata’s Nicole Eberly took second at 18.5. Eberly also finished second to Cocalico’s Hannah Palm in the 300-meter intermediate hurdles.

“I’m impressed,” Keller said of Ephrata’s hurdling corps, “by how much they’ve come and progressed as a group.”

Jamie Zamrin gave the Eagles (0-1) their only other win on the track, surging to a win in the 1,600-meter run at 5:17.6.

“She put in a phenomenal, phenomenal offseason,” Cocalico coach Ron Derr said of the junior, one of the leaders for a Cocalico team that won the section title a year ago before graduating several of its key athletes. “Her strength is as good as it’s ever been at this time of the season.”

Zamrin challenged for a win in the 800-meter run, but Ephrata’s Sydney Morgan, recovering from a sprained ankle, pulled away in the final 200 meters of the race.

“I decided that I wanted to play it safe,” Morgan said of her start. “When she came up on me, I was like, ‘Oh, I’ve kind of got to go now,’ so I kicked it in and took it home.”

Ephrata swept the jumps with wins by Faith Hershberger (long jump, 15-5.25), Fatusin (triple jump, 32-3) and Andrea Zimmerman (high jump, 4-8). The Mounts’ Jenna Raezer won the shot put (32-10) in her track and field debut with Ephrata while Cocalico answered with a pair of wins in the throws, as Katie Carrasco hit 1080 in discus, and Mackenzie Hainley marked 120-3 in javelin.

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