Dukes hope to shine at state track

If strength in numbers is what wins track meets you can expect the York Dukes to fare rather well this weekend in Omaha. With 14 guys competing, York shares the lead in male participants with Boys Town while only six teams boast more female competitors than the Dukes’ nine.
“Going into districts a lot of people thought we’d be sending around 15 kids to state,” Head coach Bruce Moore said. “Thanks to a strong showing at districts, we’re sending a lot more than that.”
A solid team effort that combined strong individual performances with strong efforts in relays helped lead the York boys to the District B-3 championship and the girls to a fifth place finish last week at Concordia University in Seward. And although only one of York boys and girls four relay teams that qualified is in the “fast” heat this Friday, coach Moore knows from experience not to count any of them out.
“Anything can happen with relays,” he said. “If you come in prepared and hit your handoffs you never know what will happen. You can shave some time off and a couple of the other teams could drop their batons or have bad handoffs.”
The Dukes are hoping to carry some of the momentum they built up at districts over to this weekend’s meet. Whether or not that will happen remains to be seen.
“It’s really hard to say what will happen,” Moore said. “Sometimes you’ll have people ranked really high going in and they don’t do so well and sometimes you’ll have people who aren’t ranked as high go in and shine. State track is a different kind of world.”