Get to know Sandpoint track and field's rising stars

Watch any high school track meet and more often than not, a who’s-who of athletes will be putting on a show.

Over in the dirt, there’s usually lineman throwing shot put, or a shooting guard leaping into the pit. Near the end-zone, cornerbacks and wide receivers hurdle over the high jump bar, while soccer midfielders and that quirky, inseparable pack of distance runners orbit on the track in the background.

In short, no sport has a diverse cast of characters quite like track and field.

With this in mind, here are a handful of the athletes to watch during Sandpoint’s 2019 track and field season, ranging from school-record holders to promising underclassmen and everyone in between.

Maddie Morgan: The school-record holder

School records are, by nature, rarely broken.

Breaking a school record as an underclassmen and having the opportunity to keep improving, however, is even rarer.

As the Bulldogs’ lone school record holder on the roster, junior triple-jumper Maddie Morgan has a unique opportunity to improve on her 34’9.5” record this season. During the state meet last season, Morgan broke the record three times throughout her flights and ultimately placed sixth at state.

“Surprisingly, I feel like [breaking the record] relieved a lot of pressure off of me,” Morgan said. “Throughout last season I kept saying, ‘I want to break this record.’ So now I tell myself I did it, my hard work paid off, but I still need to work hard.”

Although the pressure to break the record has since passed, she will now face the record-setter’s dilemma between either putting too pressure on herself to keep the record, or not putting enough pressure on herself and resting on her laurels.

Her coaches, however, know the latter will not be an issue for Morgan.

“The thing that the kids that have names on the record boards have in common is that they want to work hard and want to listen,” Jumps head coach Dave DeMers said. “Maddie is an extremely good listener. She takes feedback to heart. And she does not like to lose at all.”

Coaches and teammates view Morgan as one of the more self-motivated athletes on the roster, but also one of the vocal leaders on the team as a whole. Morgan is a captain for the jumps team, and is also one of the more senior returners on a wide-open sprint squad.

“Maddie Morgan’s forte is the jumps, but she really came into her own the second half of the season last year by helping us on the 4x100,” Sprints coach Tom Keener said. “She has really improved her speed. I’m really looking for her to be a force on the 4x100 because she’s going to keep getting better.”

Nikolai Braedt: The surging sophomore

Don’t look now, but Sandpoint’s distance-running records could be in jeopardy.

Sophomore Nikolai Braedt proved himself in cross-country this past fall by lowering his 5K time from a JV-level 18-minute range to a competitive 16:15. Thanks to his training partners and a busy offseason, head coach Matt Brass believes Braedt can have a similar breakout in track.

“He can potentially break 4:30 as a sophomore,” Matt Brass said of the sophomore, whose personal best in the mile is a 4:43.75.

And Braedt believes in himself too. One of his biggest takeaways from cross-country was fully realizing his stamina, and not being afraid to push the pace with the lead pack early on.

“I know I always have a kick in me,” Braedt said. “I learned this cross-country season that if I go out faster, I’ll always get a better time because I’ve never really died at the end.”

Paige Davidson: The do-it-all junior

Filling four events can sometimes be a challenge for the average track athlete, yet this isn’t a problem for Paige Davidson.

If anything, the junior distance runner/hurdler/pole vaulter/ has been known to do too much.

“Paige is unique because she can do a little bit of everything,” DeMers said. “As a coach, you’ve gotta be specific at times. If she could just put all of her time into pole vault and hurdles, she’d be extremely good at both of those.”

For the third straight season, Davidson will embrace juggling her wide array of events.

“There’s a lot of time management in getting all my events in and managing my workout schedules with all my different coaches,” Davidson said. “I like it because I can still do everything that I really like to do.”

Because of her distance-running background, her teammates and coaches believe she will also try the 800 this season. But adding this particular event to her repertoire can be problematic: The 800 and the 300 hurdles, Davidson’s specialty event, are run back-to-back.

“She’s kind of splitting hairs,” DeMers said. “It’s challenging if you try to run an 800 in a meet and come back and run a 300, or run a 300 and wait hours to do the pole vault.”

The latter two events have been her forte. Davidson qualified for state in both the 300 hurdles and the pole vault as a sophomore last season.

“It was really cool to go to state as a sophomore and to have that experience,” Davidson said. “This year, I’d probably want to go to state the 300 hurdles and the pole vault. I know it’s what I did last year, but I’d like to focus on those events.”

Right now, Davidson projects to be the woman to beat in the pole vault at regionals, as her PR of 9’1” was not only good enough for a runner-up finish, but also a foot higher than the next finisher.

The vaulter ahead of her? That’d be her older sister Hannah, who is now running for Utah State’s cross-country and track teams.

Sloan Woodward and Seth Graham: The two-lap tandem

One would be hard-pressed to find two equally-matched distance runners quite like senior Sloan Woodward and junior Seth Graham.

The pair finished .35 seconds apart in the 800 at regionals, then .69 seconds apart at state a week later.

“We didn’t mind who won the race as long as we both did well,” Woodward said. “We’re really supportive of each other and it helps us gets better.”

The 800 meters requires a balance between speed and stamina. At elite levels, the event is considered an all-out, two-lap sprint, yet at the high school level, it requires a delicate balance of maintaining a breakneck pace and choosing when to throw in surges. Luckily, Woodward and Graham’s racing styles compliment each other: Woodward focuses on throwing surges around the 400-600 meter marks, Graham prefers hammering the first and last 200 meters, while maintaining speed in the middle.

“We really work off of each other well,” Woodward said.

On paper, Woodward and Graham are the region’s runners to beat in the 800, with Braedt not too far behind. The Bulldogs finished 1-4 at the regional meet last season; another sweep while also breaking two minutes are the pair’s main focus.

“We’re really going to work on the 800 this year and try to both get top three at state,” Graham said. “This year we’re hoping for a really fast regional race because we have a lot of depth. We’re hoping to get some at-larges to state aside from just the two slots.”

Aside from individual events, the duo also wants to focus breaking the school’s 4x800 record this year — even though it’s not a 4A state event.

Breakout candidates

A track season wouldn’t be complete without breakout candidates, of which Sandpoint has many.

For jumps, DeMers pegged two upperclassmen to have big seasons this year.

“I see Christian Niemela as a one of the better jumpers that we’ve had,” DeMers said. “I’m going to ask him to try the high jump a bit. And Elaine Huang is a lot stronger this year than what she was last year. She’s given herself an opportunity to be better this year, so I’m excited for her.”

But Aspen, Colo. native Gemma Howard might have the highest upside due to her youth and athleticism.

“She has a great vertical, is extremely limber and she’s tall,” DeMers said. “She wants to hurdle, so I’m going to try to get her to do the 110 and also the high jump. If she could jump 5’ or 5’2” [in the high jump], that’ll be top six at state.”