After a historic season for the Southeast Valley boys’ track and field team, the Jaguars were looking to rewrite the history books in the final chapter of the 2026 season at the Iowa State Track and Field meet this past weekend in Des Moines. The Jaguars took a school record of 11 events to Drake Stadium on May 21st - May 23rd to finish out the season.

The second day of the meet on Friday saw the Jaguars’ Colin Johnson become Southeast Valley’s first boys’ state track & field champion in the 400m low hurdles. Colin had to make a hard sprint the final 100m to chase down two runners, crossing the finish line in a school record time of 52.71 to claim the title.  

Colin also was part of the other two relay teams that also placed at the state meet. The sprint medley relay team competed Saturday morning and saw Alex Burger, Kayden Showers, Logan Jaeschke join Colin. The quartet was able to claim runner-up honors with a second place finish tying the school record in a time of 1:33.82. Grundy Center won the race in a meet record time of 1:31.47.

A few hours later, the Jaguars found the shuttle hurdle relay team competing in the final race of the meet after they qualified for the finals on Thursday with a second fastest qualifying time of 59.80. While the Jaguar quartet of Alex Burger, Casey Hanson, Kolton Ollinger and Colin Johnson was able to improve on the time from two days before with a 59.47 (.02 from the school record), they were able to claim third place in the race behind Treynor and Okoboji.

The three placewinning events scored Southeast Valley 24 points which was strong enough for a top-ten team finish putting the Jaguars 9th overall. Alburnett won the team race, with Grundy Center second. This was the boys’ highest finish as a team at the state meet.

The Jaguars on Thursday also had Kayden Showers and Logan Jaeschke compete in the 200m dash. Kayden was 15th overall in a time of 22.48 and Logan was 20th in personal best time of 22.69.

On Friday, Colin Johnson finished 9th in the 110m high hurdles, just missing making finals by .03 seconds running 15.14 while teammate Kolton Ollinger tripped and fell over the last hurdle to get up and finish 22nd in a time of 16.61. Alex Burger just missed out on placing in the 400m low hurdles for the second year in a row, finishing 9th with a 56.03.  

In the 4 x 100m relay, Casey Hanson, Logan Jaeschke, Bryce Harrison and Kayden Showers took 18th with a 44.03 in the prelims. Finally on Friday, the 4 x 400m relay team of Kolton Ollinger, Alex Burger, Keelan Wellman and Logan Jaeschke broke their own school record in a time of 3:27.53 to finish 11th overall.

On Saturday, Owen Nuss competed in the 800m dash. Owen’s 2:03.79 was just a second off his personal best for the season and placed his 21st.

“The track & field season is a long season both physically and mentally. I thought we did an excellent job of competing and to have three events place and end up ninth as a team is something to be proud of. However, there were some disappointments as well and as a coach, that roller coaster is sometimes hard to deal with as you experience both the highs and lows along with the athletes,” commented Coach Nuss. “We celebrate a lot of successes which is what everybody else sees, but only a few of us are there behind the scenes to know and feel the heartbreaks that come along with competing as well.”

Coach Nuss would also like to thank the seniors for their hard work and leadership this year. “While we will miss all six of the seniors, we are excited for the group we have coming back as well as the incoming freshmen after the outstanding season they had in junior high. While this season was record breaking and will be hard to beat, the future looks bright and the chances are good to do the same thing again next year. We as coaches are already looking forward to it.”