No track, no problem for Petersburg Vikings

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JDHS’ Eller, I. Meyer, Mangaccat and Ricke won’t he 4×400 in 5:39.22 and Eller, I. Meyer, Shane and Ricke won the 4×800 in 10:47.81

Not all JDHS returning region champs attended Kodiak.

Triple Jump champion Siena Farr was among those country wise email marketing list concentrating on the Capital City Classic, the team’s first home meet on April 25-26.

“I’m looking forward to the first home meet coming up,” Farr said. “I started jumping because there weren’t any female triple jumpers. Although I enjoyed my time and I would be willing to do it again at regions if there weren’t any triple jumpers or our team needed the points, triple jumping is very hard on my body and not something I prefer to do over distance running.”In the last two decades, the Petersburg High School Vikings track and field team has had roughly 20 individual state champions, a multitude of podium finishes and handfuls of third, fourth and top-ten team finishes at the state tournament…not to mention the Region V titles that moved most of these athletes and teams on to Anchorage.

Not extraordinary across the range of Southeast — until you consider they have no track to speak of. Over the weekend, athletes from that background were practicing at the Thunder Mountain Middle School track in Juneau, something the team has done for many years, since before the Juneau schools split and Adair Kennedy Field was the attraction.

“Well, these kids don’t have a track in Petersburg,” Vikings head coach Erin (Pfundt) Hofacre said. “We have this little dirt circle that they can go out in, and they have a lot of grit and they know how to put in a lot of effort, but when we show up to a meet against other schools that do have tracks they step on and it’s like, ‘Where’s the starting line for the 400? And how do we set up a block on an actual forever track?’ So for all of those things and more, we needed to come up and figure that stuff out so that we’re prepared for that first meet.”