When it started its 2023 season on March 21 at the Montgomery County Early Invite, the Wellsville-Middletown track team decided to try something new.

For the first time in program history, the Tigers had participants in the javelin. Four girls – senior Molly Scott, juniors Jenelle Boeckelman and Meagan Cripe and freshman Brooke Stroup – represented W-M at the event. Boeckelman turned in the team’s top finish, placing 20th out of 43 participants in 60 feet, 11 inches and edging Stroup by two inches to become the team’s first record holder in the javelin.

“I’m always looking for something for our athletes to be successful in, especially the ones who I think are really hard working,” W-M coach John Slovensky said. “We started the javelin because I thought it might be an area that some of our hardest working athletes might have a chance to pick up a new event and be successful in.”

Throwing will be one of the Tigers’ biggest strengths in the girls division this season. Out of the eight girls on the W-M roster, four of them are throwers. Beside the javelin throwers, the Tigers will also have Cripe, Stroup, senior Kaylee Marshall and sophomore Della Gosseen in the shot put and discus events. Last year, Marshall came up one place short of qualifying for sectionals in the shot put.

“It’s going to be difficult figuring out how to rotate those because we can put only two in one event in most meets,” Slovensky said. “So we’ll have two discus throwers, two shot putters and two javelin (throwers). We have to figure out a rotation to make sure everybody gets a chance to do something. That’s rough, but what’s nice is that we have one senior thrower, one junior thrower, one sophomore thrower and one freshman thrower.”

The Tigers’ top athlete, junior Bethany Slovensky, returns for another season after getting all-state honors in the hurdle events last year. Slovensky turned in an outstanding effort at the Montgomery County Early Invite, winning the triple jump and the hurdle events and placing fourth in the long jump. She finished with a jump of 32-8.25, breaking her previous mark of 32-5.5 that was set in her eighth-place finish at the Class 1 state meet in her freshman year.

The W-M boys team graduated five athletes from last year’s team that finished second in the Class 1, District 2 meet.
The Tigers have two returning state qualifiers in senior Jacob Mandrell and sophomore Hunter Bickell. In the 2022 state meet, Mandrell – who recently signed a letter of intent to compete in track and field at William Woods University next year – competed in the triple jump and the 110-meter hurdles, while Bickell was a member of the 3,200-meter relay team.

W-M has six athletes on its team who also play baseball. They are seniors Dylan Alsop, Logan Pursifull, Lucas Moore and Kaleb Peak, junior AJ Sherwood and sophomore Gage Marshall.

“A lot of the baseball boys said they wanted to participate in track and field this year, so that’s filling out some of the gaps that we have,” Slovensky said. “It will be a while before we figure out what we think they will be the most competitive in.”

Sophomore Jonah Slovensky and freshman Zackery Vogel round out the boys team, which placed in three events in the Montgomery County Early Invite.

The Tigers were scheduled to compete at the Centralia Invitational on March 30.