Strong and brimming with confidence as an injury-free senior with speed to spare, Wood River High School's Delaney Fox made the most of her four-event appearance in last weekend's State 4A track and field meet at Bronco Stadium.
She scored all of Wood River's 29 points in the two-day meet that constituted the 92nd annual Idaho High School Track and Field Championships for 5A through 1A schools on a lovely weekend in Boise.
Fox started her memorable meet Friday with an unprecedented achievement for her school in the first event of the finals, 100-meter high hurdles.
Starting and finishing with resolve, Fox became Wood River's very first 100m girls' high hurdles state champion and set a new 4A class record at 14.99 seconds, 0.25 seconds ahead of her closest pursuer.
"I'm really happy with that, since I've never broken 15.00 seconds before and it gave me a personal record and new class record," said Fox before accepting her first-place medal. Her time broke the five-year-old class record of 15.01 set in 2004 by Stephanie Barnwell of Kuna.
Not bad for a sprinter and fall soccer player who started practicing the high hurdles relatively late this spring and quickly built up speed. She reached 15.15 seconds in Thursday's 100m high hurdles prelims. Fox said she hopes to run track in college.
Shortly after winning the hurdles gold, Fox stepped to the starting line of the 100-meter dash finals and didn't get off the marks well.
Still, she accelerated and captured the second-place silver medal with a time of 12.69 seconds. It was just behind Columbia freshman Alex Van Halder (12.56) and ahead of defending 100m champion Camille Reynolds, the Lakeland senior who clocked 12.72.
Reynolds didn't like being beaten by Fox in the 100m because when it came time for the 300m intermediate hurdles finals, the Lakeland senior had her game face on.
One thing seemed certain in the 4A 300m final: The five-year-old class record of 45.39 seconds set by Bishop Kelly's Lauren Symmons in 2004 was likely to fall, big time.
That's because both Reynolds (44.93) and Fox (a school-record 45.21 seconds) had broken the class record in Thursday's preliminaries. But on Friday night, Reynolds just put it into another gear. She ran 44.17 for the gold, 1.39 seconds ahead of second-place Fox (45.56) and 1.22 seconds faster than the old class standard.
By this time, Fox had done just about all she could have done with one gold and two silvers, so she settled for sixth in the 200m dash at 26.55 seconds, a bit off her prelims time of 26.28. The running of the 200m comes hard on the heels of the 300m hurdles and offers a real challenge of endurance.
But Fox was ready for this year's challenges after two previous trips to state track, in 2006 as a freshman in the 200m and 400m dashes, and in 2007 as a sophomore doing the same four events as she did in 2009.
Hampered by ankle problems her sophomore season, Fox at that time considered her state trip a learning experience. She fell towards the end of the high hurdles that year, but came back and placed second in intermediates at 46.64, over a second slower than her silver medal Friday at 300m.
All the Wood River coaches, Sherri Koth, Monte Brothwell, J.C. Nemecek and Mike Glenn, were proud of Fox's efforts.
They were also pleased with the 10.5 points earned by two Wolverines—senior Dale McLaughlin with a third-place 13-0 in pole vault and junior Chase Caulkins with a sixth-place 3200m run (10:03.29) and fifth-place 1600m (4:33.23).
Rigby (123 points) won its third consecutive State 4A girls' title over Mountain Home (75) and Jerome (64), with Wood River 11th (29). Pocatello's boys captured the school's first state track title since 1958 by a 69-66 margin over Minico of Rupert. Pocatello had 26 points in relays and Minico 20, so that was the difference.
Wood River High School senior Delaney Fox won the State 4A 100-meter high hurdles competition Friday night at Boise’s Bronco Stadium in a class record 14.99 seconds. Here, she proudly poses after receiving her first-place medal—Wood River’s first-ever girls’ high hurdles gold.
