Blue Jays coming home as state champs, season finishes up
May 23—BISMARCK — At the 2026 West Region Track and Field Meet, Jamestown's Ryker Stoddart, Heath Heupel, Gradin Thorlakson and Aiden Skari broke a school record that had stood for 39 years. The new record only stood for seven days. "To close the state meet out, the last race of the whole meet, the boy's 4-by-400 meter relay won the whole thing and set a new school record," Jamestown High School co-head track and field coach Ken Gardner said.
"That was a great way to end the meet. " Stoddart, Heupel, Thorlakson and Skari pulled together to run the 1600 meters in 3 minutes, 22. 45 seconds.
The finish was 0. 96 seconds faster than the team's performance at the West Region meet. "Each kid can only do four events but for some of those races like the 400, 200, 4-by-100 and 4-by-200, you have preliminaries so some of those kids may have run six or seven races under their belts already," Gardner said.
"Once you get to that 4-by-400, it's been three long days but I was glad to see them come through and win. ... we saw some pretty good sized smiles there.
" The last Blue Jay boys track and field state champion was Brian Sinner in high jump in 2010. The JHS boys team finished 11th overall which was the team's highest finish since 2015. While the relay team was the only first-place finisher for Jamestown, a few other athletes found their way onto the podium.
Continue to the original source for the full article.