Danville, IA- As we reach the halfway point of “Championship Road”, we aptly pass the baton to our next school of focus in Danville and the 2017-18 Girls’ Track and Field team that ran away with the Class 1A state championship.
Head coach Natalie Ford knew she had an experienced, talented squad heading into the 2018 track and field season. Senior Kathryn Luers had established herself as a perennial state qualifier, placing top 10 in the 100-meter dash for her freshman and sophomore campaigns and the 200-meter dash through her first three years, including a fourth-place time of 26.33 seconds in her junior season.
Another name that was making headlines was Alyssa Pfadenhauer. A year behind Luers, Pfadenhauer was following a similar path and dominating at the state meet, taking the silver medal in the 400-meter dash as a freshman, then cashing in for a silver in the 200-meter dash and a bronze medal in the 400-meter dash as a sophomore at the 2017 meet. Mackenzie Speer included an 8th place finish in the high jump at that 2017 state meet, as well.
However, what made this team one to fear for the 2018 season was their relay teams. Sometimes the individuality of most of the events has us forget that there are seven relay events that are run at the state meet and for that Bears team, they returned a lineup that took gold in the Sprint Medley, which was their first championship since 1997, the 4×200, and bronze in the 4×100 meter relay.
The 2018 team steadied itself throughout the regular season and handled business at the state qualifying meet in WACO. Danville had six individuals qualify across five different events and sent four relay teams to compete, as well.
The two mainstays at the state meet, Luers, who was making her 4th appearance in Des Moines, and Pfadenhauer, who was on appearance number three, each claimed points in the 200-meter dash. Pfadenhauer led the charge with another bronze medal for her collection, clinching a time of 25.88 seconds, while Luers added two points with a 7th place nod.
Pfadenhauer was far from done, as the junior raced to a time of 57.05 seconds and a gold medal in the 400-meter dash, which is just the 4th individual state championship in program history for the Bears’ girls’ track and field program. But it was time to display Danville’s real team strength: their relays: Pfadenhauer joined Grace Grothe, Alexis Bauer, and Luers in the first place Sprint Medley team that claimed a time of 1 minute and 50 seconds, Speer would replace Luers in the 4×400-meter relay rotation and help take gold with a time of 4 minutes and 5 seconds.
Also grabbing gold was the team of Grothe, Bauer, Speer, and Luers in the 4×200 meter relay with a time of 1 minute and 46 seconds. The same team took second in the 4×100 meter relay with a mark of 51.28 seconds.
In other performances, Speer leapt to a 9th place finish in the high jump. Lastly, Addison Parrott took 10th in the 3000-meters and 11th in the 1500. Altogether, it was enough to secure Danville their first state championship.
The full team included Kaley Eisenmann, BreAnn Yaley, Kenzi Downing, Ashley Pfadenhauer, Drew Fox, Breanna Teel and assistant coaches Lucas Gourley and Amanda Richardson. For Ford, it did not take long to remember her favorite moment of the season,
“Coaches aren’t usually allowed down on the track at state, so once we got that trophy, we were all down there together for the first time and, you know, they got all the roses, the trophy, all the medals, so we just soaked it up once last time all together down on the track. So, probably that.”
The team met back up in 2024 to be inducted into Danville’s Athletic Hall of Fame where coach Ford was happy to see her team back together,
“It’s a pretty amazing honor, you know, its really great to see all these faces back here and get all the girls back together and we were all just talking about how different, you know, things are even five years later. It’s a really cool thing to do, I’m glad Danville does something like this. It gives a lot of past athletes a chance to come back and get honored, so it’s very cool.”
Stay tuned throughout the week as we continue to ride “Championship Road”!