Hartwig earns podium finish as several Titans compete at state

Friday and Saturday morning, members of the Tri-City United track and field program made the trip to St. Michael-Albertville H.S. to compete in the Class AA MSHSL Track and Field State Championships. In her return to state as the defending champion in the 400 meter dash, eighth-grader Carly Hartwig once again qualified for the finals on day one to guarantee herself a podium finish.

Hartwig’s time of 57.83 in the qualifier was the second fastest in the field, earning her a spot in the final race Saturday morning where she would go on to break her own class record with a time of 56.99. The competition on the day though proved fierce and despite overshadowing her own PR, the 56.99 time earned her third on the day to secure the bronze medal.

Friday morning also saw seventh-grader Nyadak Ruei, who has continued to explode onto the scene in the high jump this year, clear a PR height of five feet and three inches, a mark good enough to earn her 11th in the state.

The final event for Titans athletes was the 4x200m relay race which paired C. Hartwig with her sister Kaitlyn Hartwig, Guadalupe Lopez and Jillian Houn. The quartet finished their heat with a time of 1:46.45 to finish 12th in the state.

The future looks bright for TCU as Lopez is the most senior athlete who made the trip to state as a sophomore while K. Hartwig is a freshman, C. Hartwig and Houn are eighth graders and Ruei is competing in her first varsity season as a seventh grader.