A season filled with accolades and broken records was rewarded with the ultimate prize for the Pella Christian girls track and field team, as they became the first girls sports team in school history to win a team State Championship on Saturday at Drake Stadium in Des Moines.
Entering the day with 20 points from Bailey Vos winning the 400m dash and the 4x200m relay team winning their race earlier in the weekend, the Eagles were victorious in five races on Championship Saturday and racked up 60 of their 80 points to run away with the Class 2A title. Pella Christian began the day with Lexi Terpstra, Amaia Agre, Meredith Van Wyk, and Bailey Vos winning the sprint medley relay in 1:46.68. The Eagles continued to show their dominance in the sprints a short time later, as Rachel Kacmarynski defended her Championship in the 100m dash in a Class 2A State Meet record time of 11.92, while Terpstra added a seventh place finish in a personal best 12.50. A one-two finish in the 200m dash gave Pella Christian another 18 points in the team title race, as Meredith Van Wyk (24.87) edged out teammate Bailey Vos (25.04) to defend her State Title in the event.
The Eagles secured the Overall Team Championship in the second to last race of the day, as the quartet of Terpstra, Agre, Claire Westerkamp, and Kacmaryski broke the school and Class 2A State Meet record in the 4x100m relay with a time of 48.22 seconds. Westerkamp said it was a great feeling to be able to end her high school athletic career as a member of Pella Christian’s first-ever girls State Championship team.
“Grateful and thankful are my two biggest words. I’m truly blessed to have been able to run with these girls, and I think that everybody just trusting the process and giving everything to God definitely helped, but it’s been such a blessing to be able to compete with these girls throughout this whole season.”
Pella Christian capped off the team title by doing what they did in every event they competed in over the weekend, winning the 4x400m relay with Kacmarynski, Van Wyk, Maisy Meinders, and Vos running a school record time of 3:55.54. Pella Christian head coach Keith Anderson said that he and the girls knew they were capable of winning State as a team, but that it was still a surreal feeling to reach the pinnacle of Class 2A.
“I don’t even know if words can describe it [this feeling] right now, this has been something that’s been on our radar since the end of last season when we finished runner up to Van Meter. We knew we had everybody coming back and that we were going to be faster and stronger, so the last month or so is when things started to come together. We started placing people in their various events to maximize points and I would say that these last three days that everything went exactly as planned.”
The State Champion Eagles girls track and field team graduates two seniors from the program in Claire Westerkamp and Faith Kacmarynski.