The Pella girls and boys track squads join a stout field at the Panther Relays in Knoxville today.

The Pella boys are perfect this season winning all three meets they’ve competed in so far with an average of six first place finishes in each meet.  Coach Brent Van Hauen is very pleased with how the guys have performed so far this season and says they really want to do well at today’s meet.   He says they look at today’s meet as a good test because of the tough competiton and says it helps prepare them for big meets later this season such as conference and districts. He also notes they only have two meets remaining to try and qualify events for the upcoming Drake Relays and says in addition to trying to win the Panther Relays, that’s a focus of theirs today as well.

The Pella girls are coming off an impressive season opening performance Thursday at Nevada and Coach Dak Rasmussen says they always look forward to the Panther Relays because it’s a great track, strong competition and only makes them better. One issue facing the girls today however is the fact that tonight is Prom at Pella High School. Rasmussen says they’ll lose many of their strongest competitors about halfway through the day and says they plan to stack up their early events and hopefully score some points that will give them a good all around finish at the end of the day.

The much improved Pella Christian girls and boys squads will also compete at Knoxville today.