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Big day for A-C's Hess at Shippensburg


Big meet season has arrived for local track and field athletes. Few appear more ready for it right now than Annville-Cleona's Reagan Hess.

Hess tuned up for the upcoming Lebanon County, Lancaster-Lebanon League, District Three and PIAA state meets with a stellar performance on Saturday, producing a staggering four gold medal-winning efforts at the 90th annual Jack Roddick/Shippensburg University High School Track and Field Invitational.

The A-C junior captured the girls Class AA long jump title with a mammoth leap of 19 feet, and blazed a trail to victory in the AA 100 and 200-meter dashes in 12.34 and 25.69 seconds, respectively, while also anchoring A-C's victorious 400-meter relay team that broke the tape in 50.95 seconds. In doing so, she led A-C to a second place finish of 30 teams in the team standings

Hess's standout performances highlighted what was a busy day for the A-C girls as a whole. Timeshah Clark grabbed fourth-place medals in the 100 and 200, and Morgan Zimmerman was third in the 200.

Meanwhile, A-C's Courtney Conners was seventh in the 800 to add another medal to the collection, while Veronica Merone and Tori Malloy joined Clark and Hess on the victorious 400 relay team.

The A-C boys had a banner day as well, placing fifth out of 35 teams behind Adam Fox's win in the shot put and Matt Light's third in the long jump and fourth in the javelin. The Little Dutchmen also got two medals from Derek Bosworth, a fifth in the high jump and a seventh in the 110-meter high hurdles, en route to their top 5 finish. Stanley Miller added a sixth in the 200, and Nate Ulrich did the same in the high jump.

In boys AAA, the top county efforts came in the shot put, where Northern Lebanon's Dakota Leonhard was third, and in the javelin, where Cedar Crest's Evan Horn (fourth), Leonhard (fifth) and Palmyra's Alex Hoffsmith (seventh) all made it to the medal stand.

Lebanon's Derin Klick added a sixth-place medal in the AAA 800 meters, while Cedar Crest's Chris Kelly took seventh in the AAA discus, and Palmyra's Evan Kline, Brenden Mellin, Noah Davis and Ethan Harro were seventh in the 4 x 100 relay.

And in girls AAA, Palmyra's Camryn Simpson took fifth in the triple jump and Elco's Chandelle Keller was sixth in the same event. Simpson's Palmyra teammate Kirstin West was eighth in the javelin and the Cougars' 3200 relay of Kelsei Bixler, Jess Dembrowski, Ellie Keck, and Juliana Kerper snared a fourth-place finish.