T-R PHOTO BY STEPHEN KOENIGSEFLD • East Marshall’s Nick Meling makes the turn toward the homestretch in the Class 2A 3,200-meter run on Thursday. Meling set a personal best of 9 minutes, 43.89 seconds, and took seventh.

DES MOINES — Troy Dolphin might not have had the stand-out day he had hoped for, but coming off a night of little sleep and trying preparation, he made due with the cards he was dealt.

The BCLUW junior tripled in the 100, 200 and 400-meter dashes Thursday at the state track and field meet at Drake Stadium, winding up 22nd, 20th and 18th respectively.

He said sleeping was rough without air conditioning the night prior to the state meet, because of rolling power outages across Conrad in the suffix of major thunderstorms. But that wasn’t a good enough excuse for Thursday’s events.

“It’s really an honor to make it in the three sprints,” Dolphin said. “That was really my goal, to make it in all three, all year. I didn’t run as good as I had hoped to, but it was good to be down here. I just hope to be back next year.”

In less than three hours, Dolphin ran his 200 (23.61 seconds), his 100 (11.63) and his 400 (53.27). He was seeded 21st, 18th and fourth in the events, respectively, after his district meet. But the turnaround can be grueling, even at the state meet level.

“The cold weather helps a little bit with recovery, but I was feeling it,” Dolphin said. “I’m just happy to do it. I’m happy we got some events down here. We moved up to [Class] 2A this year, and we were a little bit afraid of that. But we qualified some events. I hope we made Comet fans proud.”

Jack Garber will compete for the Comets in the 110-meter hurdles today at 3:20 p.m. for BCLUW. He’s seeded second with a 15.01.

East Marshall senior Nick Meling brought in a couple points in a stacked 3,200-meter run at the beginning of the 2A/3A session Thursday. Meling was seventh with a 9:43.89, his second sub-10-minute two-mile race ever. The only other time he was under 10 minutes was the state meet last year where he was sixth in 9:52.51.

Meling went out fast, crossing the mile mark with a group that had two finishers break the previous two-mile, Class 2A record. He said he was a little worried about falling off the pace too much as the final 800 came around.

“I knew the running grounds here was going to be a lot more tough than the year before,” Meling said. “I knew I could hang with them. I know my last [personal record] was a 10:10 this year, I was confident I could get back down close to my PR I made here at state last year. And I crushed that, so I’m pretty excited.”

Meling has the day off today before coming back and running in another elite 1,600 field that is sure to push some record barriers on Saturday.

His teammate, Justin Ridout, competed in an equally difficult shot put field, seeing the East Marshall junior throw 49 feet, 1 1/4 inches, for 14th place. Ridout competed against a field that saw three, 60-foot throws, which had never been done in any class in state meet history. Jared Brinkman of Iowa City Regina won the event with a throw of 63-4.

West Marshall had Beau Coberley go in two events Thursday. The Trojan junior took 12th in the long jump at 19-5 1/2 and then came back to finish 13th in the 200 in 22.93.

Team Standings

2A — 1. Madrid 19, 2. Kingsley-Pierson/Woodbury Central 18, 3. Dike-New Hartford 17, 4. Iowa City Regina 12, 5. Mid-Prairie 11, 6. Ogden, Kuemper Catholic, Albia 10, 9. Garner-Hayfield/Ventura, Treynor, Western Christian 8; 25. East Marshall 2.