Big day for Walther Lutheran at Lisle Sectional meet

An injury gave Walther Lutheran boys track coach Bill Koehne some concern going into the Lisle Class A Sectional on Friday night at Benedictine University.

Walther freshman Matthew Wallace was penciled in to be part of both the 400- and 800-meter relays until being sidelined with an injury.

Koehne decided to replace Wallace with senior Garrick Turner on both of the relays.

The move turned out as well as the Broncos could have hoped for with both relays advancing to the Class A state meet on Friday and Saturday at Eastern Illinois University.

Turner, Will Jenkins, Bryson Green and Brandon Sims won the 400 relay in a season-best time of 43.96 seconds.

The same four runners placed second in the 800 relay in 1 minute, 32.91 seconds, which was also a season-best effort.

The 400 relay for Walther had the eighth-best sectional time.

"(Turner) is a senior and has been around," Koehne said. "He stepped up as well as the other three runners. He's been injured off and on this season, and has not run too much. He ran one of the relays (800) at (the Private School League meet a week earlier)."

Sims picked up the first-place medal in the 200 dash in 22.50 and Hughes qualified with a second in the 400 dash in 52.69. Sims will be seeded fourth going into the preliminaries on Friday based on sectional times.

Koehne was also pleasantly surprised to have the 1600 relay of Chris Koehne, Lloyd Watson, Ray Honore and Reggie Hughes qualify with a first-place time of 3:30.92.

"It was an unbelievable performance," Bill Koehne said. "They cut 13 seconds. Every one of them had season best splits."

Sophomore Sandro Mazza is headed back Downstate after winning the 3200 run in 9:51.47. He finished 13th in the event in 2007.

Mazza had the third best time among all state qualifiers.

Marcus Cyrus placed first in the triple jump at 42 feet, 11 inches and Ashton Adger was second at 42-8. Perry Brown won the discus at 130-6 and Steve Campbell a second in the shot put at 48-feet.

The Broncos also dominated the 110 hurdles with Green first in 15.63 seconds and Maurice Jefferson second in 15.64.

The Broncos won the team title with 152 points and Westmont was second with 135.