Premer clears hurdles to earn Girls’ Track Athlete award
By the arrival of early May each spring, Great Bend track and field coach Lyles Lashley has three specific objectives with his girls’ team.
First, they want to compete in the Western Athletic Conference where they have been highly successful through the nearly 40 years of the conference’s existence.
Second, he wants that to be the springboard to successful Class 5A regional and state track meets the final two weeks of the season. Those three events go hand-in-hand with how Lyles evaluates each season’s success.
Consider the first one of these goals highly successful as the Lady Panthers dominated the May 11 WAC championship on their home track. They piled up 154 points to easily outdistance runner-up Hays High’s 103 points. Of the 18 events, the Lady Panthers won eight of 11 on the track and four of seven field events.
“We’re fortunate that we have a lot of versatile athletes who can do multiple events,” Lashley said. “It provides us with a lot of options on where we can put the girls in events to score the most points. The WAC is different than almost every other meet in which we compete because it’s just the five schools.”
Paving the way for the Lady Panthers was Makenzie Premer, who earned the WAC Girls Track and Field Athlete of the Year Award (scoring 19 points in her four events), with two individual titles (100 and 300-meter hurdles) and running a leg on the winning 4×400-meter relay and the third-place 4×100-meter baton unit.
Lashley could also look to distance runner Addy Nicholson’s double in the 1600 (5:26.98) and the 3200-meters (11:59.27), Valerie Luna in the 100-meters (12.69) and high jump (5-06) and Halle Lohmeyer in the shot put (36-08.50) and discus (123-07) as reasons for his team’s highly successful day.
“We take pride in having a well-rounded team both on the track and in the field events,” Lashley said. “We’re fortunate we have enough girls on the team (34 were varsity this year), so we can work with the girls when they are incoming freshmen, identify their events and then see them improve each year.”
The Panthers hope to use the WAC success as the springboard to the regional and then state meet (May 26-27 in Wichita) after having finished runner-up in Class 5A in 2022 to Mill Valley by 8.5 points. Coincidentally, Mill Valley is now the smallest 6A school for the 2023 school year.
Great Bend’s Premer clears all hurdles en route to Athlete of Year Award
For Great Bend junior Makenzie Premer there is nothing she enjoys more than a good challenge in competitive sports.
When she and her Lady Panther track and field team hosted the 2023 Western Athletic Conference championship on May 11, the day couldn’t have more perfect.
The Lady Panthers won in a cakewalk the team championship and in the meet’s final event, Premer ran the opening leg of the winning 4×400-meter relay team and that victory provided her with enough points to be voted WAC Girls’ Track and Field Athlete of the Year.
She totaled 19 points, which came from first-place finishes in the 100- and 300-meter hurdle races, a third-place in the 4×100-meter relay and then the winning 4×400-meter baton unit. She edged out Dodge City’s Alex Gere, who had two individual titles (200 and 400-meter dashes) and one first in the 4×100-meter relay and then a fourth place in the 4×400, finishing with 18.5 points.
“Coach (Lashley) told me before the final event that I might have a chance (to win the award),” Premer said in a telephone interview. “Last year, I just came up a little short. So, it was quite exciting when I heard my name announced. It’s an honor because several of my teammates and the Dodge girl could easily have won it too.”
The two hurdle races are her bread and butter events, and she’s been running those since middle school days. There is family history here as her mother also ran the hurdles in high school, having attended Quivira Heights in central Kansas.
“My first time running the hurdles my freshman year I beat her times from high school,” Premer said with a modicum of modesty. “She’s the reason I started running hurdles in sixth and seventh grade. I’ve just been able to get better every year.”
Of the two hurdle races, Premer favors the 300-meters, indicating she’s not the fastest that is required in the 100-meter event.
“In the 100s, one mistake can cost you and you can never recover,” she said. “In the 300, you can make a mistake and still get back with your stepping and focusing on clearing the next hurdle. You can run an imperfect race and still do well.”
Premer said she tries to focus on a hurdle just as she approaches each one, making sure that she has the proper lead foot to clear that hurdle.
One of the other challenges of the 300 is that the middle portion is run on the curve and with all competitors staggered from the start, it becomes difficult in knowing how to keep a runner’s body upright and level while making the turn on the curve, Premer said.
“It’s certainly harder than the straights,” Premer said. “If you’re in the outer lanes, it’s not quite as tight making the turn as it is when you’re in lane 1 or 2. In our workotus, we try to break the race down into three segments and our goal is to get all three splits at about the same times.”
Often, just clearing the last hurdle can be the biggest hurdle of all, Premer said.
“You just feel like you can barely jump over it and then roll to the finish line,” she said. “Some races I’ll get out faster and other a little slower. I just try to finish strong.”
One thing has been a tried and true for Premer and that is hard work.
“You don’t have success without working hard at something, no matter what it is,” she said. “Coach works us hard but we also know that by doing it, we increase our chances of being successful.”
2023 Girls Track & Field Team Standings
| TEAM | POINTS | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Great Bend | 154 |
| 2 | Hays | 103 |
| 3 | Dodge City | 49 |
| 4 | Liberal | 44 |
| 5 | Garden City | 25 |
2023 Western Athletic Conference
All-Conference Girls Track & Field
| EVENT | NAME | SCHOOL | MARK |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100m | Valerie Luna | Great Bend | 12.69 |
| 200m | Alex Gere | Dodge City | 26.55 |
| 400m | Alex Gere | Dodge City | 1:00.82 |
| 800m | Eliana Beckham | Great Bend | 2:29.96 |
| 1600m | Addy Nicholson | Great Bend | 5:26.98 |
| 3200m | Addy Nicholson | Great Bend | 11:59.27 |
| 100m hurdles | Makenzie Premer | Great Bend | 16.80 |
| 300m hurdles | Makenzie Premer | Great Bend | 47.22 |
| 4x100m relay | Sophia Jones Joslyn Scheck Alex Gere Carina Myers-Soltero | Dodge City | 50.69 |
| 4x400m relay | Mersadie Spray Makenzie Premer Eliana Beckham Kara Feist | Great Bend | 4:07.97 |
| 4x800m relay | Eliana Beckham Kate Welcher Morgan Beckwith Sienna Smith | Great Bend | 10:22.00 |
| High Jump | Valerie Luna | Great Bend | 5-06 |
| Pole Vault | Katie Kuhlman | Great Bend | 8-06 |
| Long Jump | Lilian McGrath | Hays | 17-03 |
| Triple Jump | Morgan Geerdes | Hays | 34-08 |
| Discus | Halle Lohmeyer | Hays | 123-07 |
| Javelin | Macy Nachtigal | Great Bend | 125-11 |
| Shot Put | Halle Lohmeyer | Great Bend | 36-8.5 |
