The East Central District Track Meet made its return last week after being cancelled in 2011 due to the teachers union strike. Despite being saddled with cold, windy, and rainy conditions all of the meet's events went on schedule with both Yorkton schools having various successes.
Sacred Heart High School's Preston Liebrecht set two district records heading to provincials while Matijhis Wenning had a strong performance in the long distance running events for the Yorkton Regional High School, ensuring that both high schools have provincial medal hopefuls heading into the June 1-2 provincial championships.
Kent Serey, head of the East Central District Track Meet said while the wind was a challenge, it did not damper the enthusiasm of the athletes, noting, "The athletes were fairly prepared, and other then the weather things ran fairly smooth." Serey said all the Good Spirit School Division and Christ The Teacher School Division schools were represented and all the coaches were a huge help to ensuring the events ran smoothly without cancellations or delays.
Yorkton Regional track coach Duane Miller said the lack of cooperation from the weather prior to the track meet was more of a challenge than the rough weather for the event itself saying, "There have been more difficult training conditions this year, making it hard to get ideal training repetitions in." Despite the rough weather for the track season Miller was impressed with his team's all around effort and performance claiming, "We got good performances from all over the field and track events."
With the weather being wet Miller also pointed out that the bad weather can be beneficial to some events and a hindrance to others as long distance runners are less effected than short distance runners who have to keep limbs warm and loose for multiple heats and trials. The Yorkton Regional and Sacred Heart schools will now aim to represent the East Central team in the 2012 SHSAA Track and Field Finals over the June 1-2 weekend.
