Amos Bartelsmeyer, Zeke Elliott, Haley Pryor Come Up Big in Clayton Track Meet

Junior Amos Bartelsmeyer of MICDS is on a mission. There’s not much he will allow to come between himself and the state 1600 meter title (fancy new name for the mile).

Bartelsmeyer hung around with the field and broke for the lead with 2 1/2 laps to go and cruised to a convincing victory in the 1600 meter run at the 79th running of the Marion Freeman Clayton Invitational with a sparkling time of 4:12.94. This is a personal best for him, and a far cry better than the 4;20 he ran at the Kansas Relays last Saturday.

At the KU relays, everyone held back, no one wanted to take the lead and it ended up with a slow time. All of the competitors could have done better.

But with Rams teammates all around the track encouraging this lanky distance man on, he swept the field. His time was a shade off the 4:11.34 set by Daniel Everett of Westminster Christian Academy last year in the Blue Division, or the overall record of 4;09.44 set by Jim Olsen of Kirkwood way back in 1965.

Bartelsmeyer has another year to work on those record times.

It was a tactical race to be certain. He was facing runners from O’Fallon (Illinois) he had never seen, or knew nothing about.

“I just pushed it in the last lap. I am really happy with my time,” he said as teammates handed him water and slapped him on the back.

“I felt like I was going to have a strong finish.”

Bartelsmeyer has yet to give college choices much consideration. “I will be looking at schools this summer.” He could be interested in Ivy schools like Princeton or Brown.

It was another day at the office for junior speed demon Ezekiel Elliott of John Burroughs. He parlayed his power and speed to win both hurdle events: the 110 highs in 14.28 and the 300 intermediates in 38.47. Neither time quite eclipsed the record, but he too has another year to work on that.

“It’s good to see the competition you are going to face in the (state) meet. I can tell you, there’s a lot of speed in the hurdles these days.”

The MICDS girls had a good meet, winning their division with 121 points. The Burroughs boys took third with 101.50 points.

Annalise Wagner of Burroughs was a double winner: 1,600 meters in 5:29.43 and 800 meters in 2:26.69. Other local winners were Haley Pryor in the pole vault: 11-3. Xavier Bledsoe in the high jump 5-10; Jaelin McGull of Burroughs in the discus 143-07; Madison Mann of MICDS in the 300 hurdles: 46.56 and Klasey Medelberg in the 3200 meters 12:25.39. Medelberg plays on the Rams soccer team.