Tawas Area's Sandy Brandt (running the 4x800 relay, above) repeated her first-place finishes from last season in the 1600 and 3200-meter runs at the AGS Invitational.
Fairview's Britney Evans gets encouragement from a teammate during the 4x800 relay at AuGres-Sims.
Brent Baker
AuGres-Sims' Emily Lutz threw for a fifth-place finish at Tuesday's invitational.

AuGRES-SIMS - May 8, 2007 - Oscoda County rivals Mio AuSable and Fairview finished tied for the top spot at the AuGres-Sims Invitational on Tuesday, in a meet in which the top four schools finished within five points of one another.

Mio won the 4x400 relay in the final event of the day to leapfrog from third to the first-place tie as both the Thunderbolts and Eagles finished with 85 points. Hale took third with 82, followed by Alcona (80), Tawas Area (64), Oscoda (47), AGS (40), Atlanta (38) and Posen (6).

Atlanta's Melissa Hale was named the meet's Most Valuable Athlete, winning the 400 (meet-record 1:01.18); and 200 (27.93) and taking second in the long jump (14-7.5).

Winning events for Mio were Megan Maier in the pole vault (8-0); Kristen Kososky in the 100 hurdles (17.36); and Arielle Smith, Kim Brown, Maier and Casie Hanson (4:41.12) in the 4x400.

Event-winners for Fairview were Amanda Calhoun in the shot put (34-1.5); Katie Devereaux, Alora Haskin, Britney Evans and Indigo Szubelak in the 4x800 (11:05.25); and Tia Rogers in the 100 (13.50).

For Hale, winners were Sabrina Provoast in the discus (103-4); and Shanna VanHorn, Danielle O'Dell, Tarra Caverly and Kacey McKulsky in the 4x100 (54.33).For Tawas Area, Sandy Brand won the 1600 (6:01.98) and 3200 (13:58.63) while Oscoda's Megan Zarrachowicz was a winner in the high jump (4-10).

Also winning events were Alcona's Rachel Cook in the long jump (14-11), 4x200 relay (1:56.66); and Elena Dunkel in the 300 hurdles (49.12).

Other top finishers for Mio included Amie Byelich (2nd, 8-0) and Katelyn Blair (5th, 7-6) in the pole vault; Brown, Smith, Tina Leinmuller and Hanson in the 4x800 (2nd, 11:08.72); Smith in the 100 (3rd, 13.84); Kososky, Hanson, Maier and Byelich in the 4x200 (3rd, 2:00.02); the 4x100 relay (4th, 55.83); Maier in the 400 (3rd, 1:06.70); Kososky in the 300 hurdles (4th, 53.16); Hanson (4th, 2:40.11) and Brown (6th, 2:50.10) in the 800; and Leinmuller in the 3200 (3rd, 14:36.87).

Fairview's top finishers were Morgan Wiedbrauk (3rd, 98-0.5) and Calhoun (4th, 90-8) in the discus; Wiedbrauk (6th, 28-9.75) in the shot put; Szubelak in the high jump (2nd, 4-8) and 800 (2:39.07); Rogers in the pole vault (3rd, 8-0) and 200 (2nd, 28.61); Jessika Bills (6th, 7-0) in the pole vault; Brittany Putinsky (5th, 14.07) in the 100; the 4x200 relay (4th, 2:00.56); Lydia Douglas in the 1600 (6th, 6:55.67) and 3200 (6th, 15:46.14); and Haskin in the 300 hurdles (6th, 55.45) and 200 (5th, 29.99).

Top finishers for Hale included Liz Lerczak in the high jump (5th, 4-3); O'Dell (6th, 13-7.75) in the long jump; Provoast in the shot put (2nd, 32-10.25); Caverly (3rd, 17.98) and VanHorn (4th, 18.92) in the 100 hurdles; VanHorn (2nd, 13.69) in the 100; VanHorn, O'Dell, Caverly and McKulsky in the 4x200 (2nd, 1:56.84); Ashley Malin in the 400 (2nd, 1:05.59); Caverly in the 300 hurdles (3rd, 52.51); and McKulsky in the 200 (3rd, 29.19).

Top finishers for Tawas included Knox in the discus (2nd, 102-6); Amanda Anderson in the discus (5th, 84-2); Sarah Blust in the high jump (4th, 4-6); Erica Lundy in the pole vault (4th, 7-6) and 200 (6th, 30.05); Amanda Kaiser (5th, 18.94) and Samantha Duvall (6th, 19.26) in the 100 hurdles; the 4x100 relay team of Duvall, Kaiser, Julie Enzenberger and Lundy (3rd, 54.81); Brittany Combs in the 400 (4th, 1:07.21); Brandt in the 800 (5th, 2:48.14); Abbie Hutchison in the 3200 (4th, 14:58.59); and Charity Cardinal, Combs, Amy Johnson and Kaiser in the 4x400 (4th, 4:45.68).

Tawas coach Chris Lerczak was particularly happy with the performance of his 4x100.

"They were our biggest surprise of the day," he said. "We took almost five seconds off and finished third. It was nice to run against the North Star League teams; they really have some good programs with fast kids."

For Oscoda, top finishers included Ashley Schonfeld in the high jump (6th, 4-3) and 300 hurdles (2nd, 49.85); Jeri Carl (3rd, 30-1.5) and Sarah Inman (4th, 29-5) in the shot put; Maggie Ungurean in the 1600 (3rd, 6:25.33) and 3200 (2nd, 14:04.71); and Brittany Lynch (6th, 1:09.01) in the 400.

AuGres-Sims' top finishers were Kelsey Chesney in the long jump (4th, 13-9; Emily Lutz in the shot put (5th, 29-4); the 4x800 relay (4th, 11:28.20); Jamie Taylor in the 1600 (2nd, 6:13.06) and 800 (3rd, 2:39.96); Kelsey Heinrich in the 1600 (5th, 6:45.23) and 3200 (5th, 15:17.88); Lydia Kauffman in the 300 hurdles (5th, 53.82); and Adrianne Swaffield, Samara Nenadov, Lutz and Taylor in the 4x400 (2nd, 4:43.31).

Girls Results