BLOOMINGTON – A youthful Pekin Community High School Track and Field team is sending a veteran discus thrower on to the Class AA State Track and Field Competition next week.

Pekin Community High senior Dustin Hammer will return to State competition at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston as a result of earning a gold medal in the discus throw at the event Friday, held at Bloomington High School.

Seventeen schools, including PCHS, East Peoria, Morton, Washington, and all five of Peoria’s high schools were part of the competition, held at BHS.

PCHS, under head coach Marshall Tucker, finished 13th with 16 points. Host BHS finished first in points with 117 by evening’s end. East Peoria and Peoria Manual tied for 11th with 19 points each, and Morton finished 14th with 12 points.

Hammer’s personal best toss of 151 feet, 2 inches earned him PCHS’ lone gold medal following the event.

He accomplished it despite a minor injury to the ring finger on his right throwing hand that has been nagging him since he competed in the Mid-Illini meet almost two weeks ago.

Hammer said he felt pain in his fingers – primarily that his ring finger felt as though it had been bent backward a little — while going through the motion needed to push a shot put. Tucker said it is a common injury to shot put contestants which limits, temporarily, how much pressure one can place on that hand.

Hammer said, and Tucker agreed that there is no cause to see a physician about the injury.

Morton’s Migit Hurdles Into Second Place: Morton High’s Alex Migit turn in the 110 meter high hurdles resulted in a second place finish with a time of 15.23 seconds. Like Hammer, Migit has been hampered by an injury, specifically a recurring hamstring problem.

Migit admits he was over a full second quicker in the event last year, but his injury has slowed him down.

Expectations For Later: PCHS’ 4 x 100 team of Jake Rast, John Hogue, Joe Bond, and Cameron Baldes came in 10th in the event, but Tucker wasn’t bothered by that. He knows he has a young team and considering that they will spend their off-seasons training, the expectation is that, later in the quartet’s careers at PCHS, they will be a matter of concern for future opponents.

Tucker said Friday’s event is “great experience” for his young men.

“Every meet that we’ve gone out to, every one or three-quarters of them have bettered their own times,” Tucker said.

Tucker said he and his coaching staff have been delivering the same speech to their 42-man team. “We keep telling them, ‘you don’t realize what you have here. If you keep working hard, it’ll pay off in the next couple of years.’”

How’d We Do?: Among some of the other results from the meet were: Robbie Peffer, East Peoria High, Long Jump of 21 feet, 1 ½ inches, finishing fourth; Tim Owdom, Morton, finishing the 3200 meter run in 10:21.92, earning second place.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 18th, 2007 at 8:43 am and is filed under Morton HS, Pekin Daily Times, Pekin HS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.