Lady Texans racing to state track meet

The Wimberley Lady Texan track team is sending two individuals and one relay team to the UIL 4A State Championship track meet next week.

As a team, Wimberley placed second at the regional track meet after sending athletes in twelve events, almost all of which placed.

“We used to go down to regionals as a vacation or to celebrate that we made it,” Track Coach Lacey Lambert said. “Now we are going down there to try and win it.”

The 4x400 relay team of Rhyan Masur, Riley German, Carson Crowder and Holly Harwood placed second with a time of four minutes, 7.86 seconds

“Every year we always know that is one of our best chances at getting to state,” Lambert said. “We knew going in we had one of the top times. In the prelims, us and Fredericksburg were in different heats, and we had the two fastest times with both of us finishing with a 75-yard lead. Knowing we didn’t have to do anything special in the finals, we just ran our race to make it to state.”

Grace Harney broke a school record in the 300-meter hurdles to place second and earn a trip to state. She finished with a time of 46.56 seconds, which beat Jacey Smith’s 46.6 second school record set in 2016.

“She was upset that she didn’t make it to state in the 100-meter hurdles,” Lambert said of Harney’s fourth place finish in the shorter of the two hurdle races. “She knew this was her last chance, and she ran great.”

Only the top two finishers in each event advance to state with one exception. The top third place finisher throughout all of the 4A regional tournaments gets a “wild card” exemption to advance to state also. Emily Thames placed third in the long jump but will head to state as a wild card. Thames jumped 17 feet, 9.75 inches, which was 10 inches further than her previous personal record.

“That is a huge jump,” Lambert said. “For someone like Emily, we all know she played soccer. She hasn’t gotten to spend the time training for those jumps with track as much as she has in the last two weeks so she has been really able to spend the time on fine tuning different phases through those jumps that she wasn’t able to do early this season. Being able to dial on those phases really helped her.”

The state championship will be held at Mike A. Myers Stadium at the University of Texas on May 6. Field events begin in the morning and running events start at 5 p.m.