Greenwood’s Amy Luttrell is all smiles after winning the pole vault during Friday’s state meet.
Rob Baker | For the Daily Journal
BLOOMINGTON
Having strained a hamstring during the sectional meet, Amy Luttrell had been selective over the last two-plus weeks about when and where to fully exert herself.
The Greenwood senior saved her best effort for the best possible time.
Luttrell exited her final high school meet as a state champion, winning the pole vault with a lifetime-best height of 12 feet, 9 inches to claim top honors during Friday’s meet at Indiana University.
“I haven’t really been training since sectionals; I’ve kind of just been saving it for the meets,” Luttrell explained. “So the strategy was try to get the highest heights with the least amount of attempts as possible.”
That strategy was executed flawlessly. After entering at 11-3 and clearing that bar on her second try, Luttrell then skipped over 11-6 and proceeded to convert each of her next five heights on the first shot. By the time the bar had been raised to 12-6, she and Noblesville’s Delaney Teachnor were the only two vaulters left.
Teachnor had missed twice at 12 feet and once at 12-3, putting Luttrell in the driver’s seat from a potential tiebreak standpoint; that helped ease the mental strain significantly.
“Taking the pressure off definitely helped my mentality,” Luttrell said. “It was less pressure on me to, ‘I have to clear this right now,’ whereas I had already cleared it and now I need to focus on the next height.”
After clearing 12-6 on her first attempt, Luttrell sat back and watched Teachnor come up short on all three attempts. She hugged Woodmen vault coach Paul Hafen and head coach Blaine Williams and then went right back to work, successfully making it over the bar at 12-9. Luttrell finally met her match at 13 feet, though she nearly got that one on her first try as well before grazing the bar and knocking it loose.
Luttrell’s winning performance led the way for what proved to be a massively fruitful day county-wide; athletes from five different local schools were responsible for a dozen different podium finishes.
Franklin junior Aubrey Runyon finished the night with a county-leading three medals. She placed fifth in both the 100- and 300-meter hurdles with respective times of 14.82 and 44.38 seconds, then finished the night by leading off the Grizzly Cubs’ fourth-place 4×400 relay. Runyon teamed with Ainsley Botkin, Hanna Stewart and Lauren Klem to finish in 3:55.47.
“We were watching the second heat and we were like, ‘3:55?’” Runyon said of the final relay, having watched four teams in the previous heat beat Franklin’s regional time of 3:58.88. “But then we go out and run 3:55 and get fourth.”
Klem was also 15th individually in the 400, breaking her own school record with a time of 58.48 seconds. The Grizzly Cubs tied for 16th in the team standings with 16 points.
Indian Creek sophomore Libby Dowty was the county’s top individual finisher on the track. She made a late charge in the 3,200 meters to move up from third place to second, crossing the line in 10:15.14 after chasing down Homestead’s Addison Knoblauch over the final 100 meters.
“One of my goals in every race is just to give it my all for God and just finish strong even if I’m not where I want to be,” Dowty said. “That’s where my strength came from.”
County and sectional champion Whiteland led the local teams in the overall standings, finishing in a 13th-place tie at 17 points. Senior Tori Jackson closed out her high school career with a pair of medals, holding off Carys Glyn-Jones for fifth place in the 800 meters (2:11.35) and leading off the Warriors’ seventh-place 4×800 relay (9:17.04) to join Madison Fleury, Bella Fuentes and Lena Shipp on the podium.
Elnora Stevenson’s third attempt in the long jump measured 18 feet, 5 1/2 inches, which held up for fourth place and a second straight state medal in the event for the Warrior sophomore. Stevenson also finished 25th in the 200-meter dash (26.43) and teamed with Sydney Rodgers, Annibelle Gilbert and Emma Gill to run the 4×100 relay in 48.76 seconds — which tied them with the Franklin foursome of Runyon, Addison Martin, Stewart and Sami Frazier for 12th place.
A pair of locals made the podium in the discus, with Whiteland’s Carly VonDielingen throwing 137 feet, 9 inches to place seventh and Greenwood’s Emma Gardner taking ninth with a distance of 131-10. VonDielingen barely missed another medal in the shot put, finishing 10th at 41-5; Gardner was 16th with a heave of 38-7 1/2.
Greenwood tied for 21st as a team with 11 points.
Center Grove got on the board in a pair of events. The 4×800 contingent of Marissa Pogue, Diana Hodges, Gretchen Meisberger and Hallie Mimbela was ninth in a time of 9:23.34, and Khloie Walker tied for ninth in the pole vault (11-0) to podium for the second year in a row.
Several other county performers were able to finish out their season on the state’s biggest stage.
For Whiteland, Sophia Dyer finished 15th in the discus (124-6), while Ashley Cooprider tied for 18th in the high jump (5-2) and Rodgers was 19th in the 100 (12.61). Center Grove’s Hannah Smith was 12th in the pole vault, clearing 11 feet. Dee Biddings finished 21st in the 200 meters with a time of 26.13, and Mimbela 26th in the 800 at 2:22.39.
But while several locals shone brightly on Friday, none soared higher than Luttrell. The three-time state qualifier, who finished 12th in 2022 and fifth last season, finally got to climb all the way to the top of the mountain — and the podium — in her final act.
“It felt like four years coming,” Luttrell said after getting the medal placed around her neck. “I’ve been training for this for four years, and it just felt like everything had finally paid off and it just felt wonderful.”
