Hampshire's Walker sweeps hurdles

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Hampshire's Quinn Walker will be busy next weekend at the Class AA boys state track meet at Eastern Illinois University.

Quinn won with state-qualifying times in the 110-meter hurdles and the 300 intermediate hurdles and also led the Whips to a state-qualifying second-place finish in the 400-meter relay on Friday night at the Class A Genoa-Kingston Sectional.

The senior posted a time of 14.59 seconds in the 110 and 39.47 in the 300. The combination of Quinn, Ryan Smialek, Junior Makinde and Joe Filippello posted a time of 43.97 in the 400 relay.

Hampshire -- which finished in ninth place with 33 points -- came up short in its attempt to qualify for state in the final event, the 1,600 relay. After the first lap, the baton was dropped on an exchange and sent the Whips to a sixth-place finish in the event.

"We're happy but we had hoped to qualify two relay teams if not three," said Hampshire coach Steve Bruhn. "Track and field is a funny thing. Inches and feet, all those clichés, but it comes down to a fundamental. It hurts, but now our focus is to represent Hampshire as best we can Downstate."

After the meet, Quinn echoed the same thoughts as his coach.

"We finished the race and that's why it was great," Quinn said. "But we're in three events. It's nice, but that's just half of it. We got one down and two to go. Every athlete expects to win state, so that's my goal too."

Genoa-Kingston had the best finish among area teams. The Cogs finished in fifth place (50.33 points) out of 18 teams and are also sending three athletes to state -- senior Ryan Page, sophomore Ronnie Sribniak and senior Scott Kocsis.

Page (6-3 in the high jump), Sribniak (12 feet in the pole vault) and Kocsis (20-3 1/2 in the long jump all qualified after finishing second in their respective events.

"I thought we did very well," said G-K coach Phil Jerbi. "We had a lot of bad things happen this year. We had injuries, eligibility issues. We could have easily said, 'We're done,' but we didn't. We stepped up and had a great night tonight."

St. Edward finished in 10th place and will be sending its 400 relay team to Charleston.

The combination of Josh Scholly, Matt Ardiente, Eric Guerrero and Nick Kerger beat out the Whips for first place in the event with a time of 43.47. Guerrero also finished in second place in the 100 in 11 seconds.

Winnebago won the sectional with 96 points.