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Southern Lakes a whole new meet

About the only thing certain about today’s Southern Lakes Conference track and field meet at Lake Geneva Badger is that Whitewater High won’t win the boys or girls titles.

The Whippets, who dominated Southern Lakes track and field the last 15 years, moved to the Rock Valley Conference this season.

The only carry-over members in the Southern Lakes—Elkhorn and Delavan-Darien—don’t have a solid feel about what might take place today. The conference did not run a dual-meet schedule, so member teams only have a few quadrangulars and invitationals to base their predictions.

The consensus is Lake Geneva Badger is the favorite on the boys side, while Waterford is likely to take the girls title.

But those are only guesses for the competition that begins at 4:30 p.m.

“We just don’t see each other,” said Ed Lauzon, who is in his 23rd year as Delavan-Darien’s track and field coach. “We don’t run dual meets, so we were all left scrambling to fill our schedule. We ended up having a bunch of small conference meets.”

Lauzon, whose Delavan-Darien boys team has only four upperclassmen, likes Badger.

“Badger looks real tough,” Lauzon said. “Their boys team has a lot of good seniors.”

Among the top Badger athletes are Wes Aranda in the 100, Chris Butterfield in the 400 and pole vault, Sam Ward-Packard in the 800, Justin Bowers in the long jump and Jarek Kunz in the triple jump.

Bowers finished seventh in the state last year in the long jump, while Kunz won the Lakeshore Conference triple jump last year.

“They have a body in every event,” Lauzon said.

Elkhorn coach JoAnn Schaffer and Lauzon say Waterford is the top threat to Badger on the boys side.

The Elks’ top threats in the boys meet include junior Danny Sullivan in the 1,600 and 3,200, seniors Lisle Blackbourn and Brian Schmidt in the 200 and 400, along with the 800 relay, and junior John Cooper in the discus.

Lauzon and Schaffer pick Waterford to win the girls title.

“But we’re sort of playing a guessing game,” Schaffer said.

Among the Elkhorn hopefuls is sophomore Sarah Woellert, who broke the school record in the shot with a put of 36-6¾ last week.

Senior Cassi Weiler has thrown the discus 120 feet, while sophomore Nicole Smith broke 49 seconds in the 300 hurdles on Friday.