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Wirth, Baublitz advance

Sentinel photo by TIM SHUMAKER
Greenwood's Paityn Wirth races in a Class 2A girls 100-meter hurdles race Friday at the state track and field championships.

SHIPPENSBURG — A pair of local athletes get to stay for the second day of the PIAA Class 2A track and field championships at Shippensburg University.

Juniata’s Garrett Baublitz has a chance to win a state medal in the 1,600-meter run after a personal best run that updated his school record.

Greenwood’s Paityn Wirth is guaranteed to climb the medal stand, and could be on it twice, having qualified for today’s semifinals in the 100-meter hurdles, and the finals of the 300-meter hurdles. In the latter, she can finish no worse than eighth and has clinched medal status.

Wirth runs this morning in the short race; if she is in the top two in her heat, or one of the next four best times overall, she is in the finals of that event as well. Baublitz is in a 12-runner final; the top eight will ascend the podium.

Also competing in the small-school meet were East Juniata’s John Moyer, Mount Union’s Tavin McMickens and Juniata’s Sydney Sheaffer, who medaled in the high jump.

With two hurdle races, she was certainly busy — and while her coach expressed confidence before the meet, Wirth had a different reaction.

“I said, ‘You’re crazy,'” she recalled.

Or maybe it was just good strategy — neither of her preliminary times were as good as her entry times, but she’s still alive. Today will be harder, when she runs as the 15th seed in the 100s and eighth in the 300s.

“Coming off of last year, I knew what I had to do. I just wanted to have fun, and ran,” she said. And when her season was guaranteed to be extended after the first, she said it was “Definitely a huge relief. Just the entrance in was enough for me.”

Wirth relied on sage advice from her father, who undoubtedly has watched his daughter outperform almost everyone around her in sports.

“Last night my dad told me, ‘Tomorrow, you’re not going to pull the girls along with you, they’re going to be pulling you,'” she said. “I knew I just needed to run them down and do my best.”

Wirth ran a third event Friday, the 4×400-meter relay, in which Greenwood was disqualified.

Baublitz started in the middle of his heat in the 1,600, fell to the back then worked into the front group that was guaranteed to run today. The pace, and the people running it, where a challenge.

“It’s tough to stay motived when you’re in eighth place. I’m working hard, and these guys in front of me are making it look easy,” he said. “I knew I still had a chance so I stayed with it.”

And while he knew that he only needed eighth place because the first heat was slow, but saw no reason to flirt with danger.

“I was worried — but not really too worried,” he said.

“I kind of wanted to be in fourth place with a lap to go. That didn’t happen. But it worked out,” he said.

But he got past there at the end, and crossed the line third in 4:24.85.

Now, he said, he’ll “just run and have fun. Do what I can. I’m not really worried about the time — I know I can run so much faster.”

Moyer struggled in the boys 300 hurdles, and then had a near-tragic event that took away his chance of running a second time.

“Around the fourth from the last hurdle, me and the guy in Lane 2 hit arms. He fell, I looked back and it upset me knowing he went down,” Moyer said. “That threw it off the rest of the race.

“It’s not the time we wanted, but it’s a joy just making it to states,” he said.

McMickens, as he did in wrestling, outperformed his seed to advance further than it appeared he should. His season came to an end in the 400, but not without an effort.

“It’s very hard to keep up pace and change your run at the same time. It was all on pace,” he said. “I had to come with the mindset that I had to be confident in my own ability … and keep at the other competitors.”

Now, he said, he will “continue to improve no matter what the odds are. Athletics is one of those things that’s always been there in my life.”

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