The winning time of the Wood River High boys' medley team was the local highlight of Wednesday's first day of the state-qualifying Great Basin Conference 4th District 4A track and field meet in Hailey.
Athletes from six schools converged on a sunny spring day at Phil Homer Field, but no one caught the Wolverine 1600-meter sprint medley team of senior John Bartoletta (200m), sophomore Ian Keys (200m), senior James Paris (400m) and junior Ben Stout (800m).
Their gold medal time of 3:41.80 defeated Twin Falls (3:42.09) and Minico (3:42.73) in a very good race.
Such competition was good for Wood River. The foursome sliced nearly three seconds off their previous-best time of 3:44.30 set at Buhl April 14. In addition, Wood River came up with the second-fastest medley relay time of all Idaho 4A schools this season, right be-hind Nampa's 3:41.35 clocking.
It was Wood River's only gold of the day, although junior Cheyenne Swanson (101-10) finished second behind Minico junior Linsey Bair (111-05) in the girls' discus final.
That represented quite an improvement for Bair, who had placed sixth (107-02) behind gold medalist Swanson (115-11) in last year's State 4A discus final at Bronco Stadium.
Wood River's other silver Wednesday came from senior James Paris in the 3200-meter run final. Paris (10:09.86) was a solid second behind runaway winner Erik Harris (9:43.89), the smooth-running, watch-checking junior from Twin Falls who is the reigning State 800m king.
In that 3200m race Twin Falls junior Karl Lundgren (10:17.34) held off Wood River senior Andrew Pfeiffer (10:18.92) for the third and final state berth in the two-miler. Hailey sophomore Chase Eng-land (10:42.17) was fifth of the 22 runners.
The only Wood River athlete who qualified for the finals in preliminary heats was sopho-more Ian Keys. He entered Thursday's 100m dash final with the best qualifying time (11.14 seconds) and had the fourth-best time (23.58) in a very tough 200m field.
The top three individuals and top two relays qualified for the United Dairymen of Idaho's 94th annual State Track and Field Championships in Boise May 19-20. Finals of other field events and running finals were Thursday afternoon in Hailey.
