STC Senior Kortney Babinat poses after winning the shot put competition at the Union Early Bird in La Porte City on March 30. PHOTO BY JONATHAN MEYER

LA PORTE CITY — With whistling winds and timing system malfunctions, the South Tama Girls Track Team is off and running, opening their season at Union’s Early Bird meet on March 30.

The meet started with a bit of confusion for everyone involved. Hy-Tek, a software that controls the fully automatic timing, was down and unable to record results of the meet.

So Union’s staff, along with the timing service, made the call to hand time the entire meet. Another hurdle the meet faced was one of the computers responsible for keeping track of the timing information went down.

“It was crazy,” Head Coach Emily Chyma said.

Fully automatic timing didn’t affect the high jump competition. Taking second place on the windy evening was Emma Harwick, who returns as a two time state qualifier in the event.

She cleared five feet for the first time of the season with relative ease. When asked, Harwick said some of her goals this year are to qualify for state once again in high jump, along with branching out into the 400 hurdles.

Continuing South Tama’s success in various field events was Senior Kortney Babinat. Another returning state qualifier, Babinat’s main event has been the shot put over the last few years, but now she has turned her focus to qualifying for state in the throwing double.

Picking up an impressive victory in the shot put and a third place finish in the discus, Babinat looks set to have a phenomenal senior season. Those two field event specialists picked up nearly half of the Trojans 52 points.

The Trojans also saw success on the track to go along with their various field event performances. The distance medley relay of Alexis Crouch, Cassandra Klostermann, Madi Paxton, and Kayla Heck ran to a dominating first place finish, winning in a time of 5:04.37.

The team ended the night with a sixth place finish, scoring 52 total team points. The meet was won by Union with an impressive 203.5 points.