The Ottawa Hills girls track and field team is OK Gold Conference champions.
"It was very exciting," Bengals senior sprinter Alicia Robinson said. "It was a very long day, so everybody was really tired, but it was nice to see everybody still have enough energy to celebrate and run around the track and do our victory lap. I had a lot of fun especially with the incoming freshman that were able to experience all-conference during my senior year so it was a lot fun."
This makes back-to-back for the Bengals who shared the title last year after winning the conference meet, but this is season there was no sharing.
"This year, winning it outright was beautiful for me," 14th year Ottawa Hills head coach Tony Shellman said. "It was great, it was awesome!"
Last year's team really set the foundation for the 2022 group.
"I was just letting my girls know that we want all-conference next year, this is my expectations about the team and in order to win all-conference this what we need to do," Ottawa HIlls sprint coach Alexis Baskin said. "So, just really giving them that motivation, like, hey, we won it last year, we can win it again."
The consecutive championships are no accident, the team has been striving for just this moment.
"We've just put in a lot of work over the winter, and we run year-round together and just the workouts that we put in," Bengals sophomore distance runner Selma Anderson said. "It's mostly just track workouts and staying consistent is what helps the most."
When the team won the conference last spring it was led by a group of strong seniors, a big key to this year's run has been a young core that has performed well.
"This year was just being resilient," 14th year Ottawa Hills head coach Tony Shellman said. "We had a lot of freshmen step up. Our relays are mostly freshmen and sophomores, so that is great. We have great leadership from our senior Alicia and a sophomore who was here last year, Taylor Pierce-James, they show great leadership getting these kids ready to go for these relays."
"I think that it means that we are going to be able to continue fighting for the all-conference championship with the within the next few years," Robinsons said. "There is still incoming freshman, sophomores, juniors, so we still have good year's ahead of us."
While sprints have long been a strength of the Bengals program, they have now become more than competitive in the distance events which has been a factor in their overall team success.
"It's been nice because we've been spread really thin the past couple of years," Anderson said, "Having so many good athletes come in has been really helpful and it's just been nicer in general for the entire team."
"I think it all started with our elementary program that we started," Bengals distance coach Dan Ebright said. "We started identifying some kids at a younger age and as they got into our junior high program we got them more involved and that has really helped fuel the fire for our varsity program."
For more scores, highlights, and the latest news on high school sports in West Michigan, go to the FOX 17 Blitz page.
