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Photo by John Wagner

Kayla Weber was reluctant at the start of the track and field season, as the West Valley High School senior didn’t want to throw the discus.

She got rid of her reluctance and picked up a title on Friday in the Region VI Championships-Class 4A at Lathrop. The eventual change of mind also qualified her for the state meet next Friday and Saturday at Lathrop.

“Last year, I threw only the shot put and I got third in the region. This year, I picked up the discus and I just love it; I like it more than the shot put now,” said Weber, who reached 95 feet, 4 inches in a field next to the Lathrop track.

The region victory was a carryover from the regular season, which she swept the discus in all three meets.

“It means a lot to me to win the regions,” she said.

Weber was among four Wolfpack, all seniors, to place first on the opening day of the region meet.

Werner Hoefler repeated as the boys 3,200-meter champion with a time of 10 minutes, 44.99 seconds. Crystal Pitney won in 11:36.30 in her last girls 3,200 in a region meet and Whitne’ Blackburn captured the girls triple jump title with a leap of 33-6.

“It’s real nice, it’s real comforting,” Hoefler said. “It’s a good time to test yourself and you know you’re going to drop time at state.”

Wendy Quinn, who has coached West Valley’s throwers since 1998, somewhat talked Weber into throwing the discus for the first time.

“I just told her that you’re going to do it this year, and that you should have done it last year,” Quinn said.

Weber, early in the season, was concerned about her release.

“Her biggest concern was that she couldn’t release it flat out there, and she always had the uplift on it,” Quinn said. “I said you just have to keep doing it; once you do it, once you hit it, it will be there.

“Once she made it fly, she realized that it was kind of fun.”

A fun aspect for Weber was the discus weighs less (1.6 kilograms or about 3.5 pounds) than the shot put (four kilograms or 8.8 pounds).

“It’s less heavy and it’s more technique than shot put is,” Weber said.

Weber’s winning distance on Friday occurred on her second throw of the preliminary round and it held up for the rest of the event because she scratched on her three attempts in the final round.

“In the beginning, I wasn’t as nervous and I just stuck the technique,” she said, “and I practiced on getting a good mark out there instead of going all out.”

Weber heaved the discus into the safety net on her second attempt of the final round.

“I just released really late. I don’t know, it surprised me, too,” she said.

She was also surprised about qualifying for the state meet in an event she originally didn’t want to compete.

“There’s going to be a lot more competition than this, and I hope just to get a good mark and get a personal record,” Weber said.

Also Friday, Lathrop’s Shelby McIntyre went home with her second straight girls high jump title after clearing 4 feet, 10 inches; North Pole junior Clay Tidwell claimed his first boys shot put honor with a throw of 43-11, and Ben Gallegos, a junior home school student who practices with North Pole recorded the longest distance in the boys triple jump at 39-3 1/2.

Because Gallegos is a student through the Interior Distance Education of Alaska, he doesn’t score points in the region meet and he can’t qualify for the state meet as the Region VI-4A winner. West Valley’s Jared Lindsey, who recorded the second-farthest jump of 37-11 1/2, will be designated as the region champion for the state meet.

John Estle, entries and results coordinator for the Region VI meet, said that Gallegos can qualify for the state meet his jump puts him among the next best 12 finishers from the four 4A region meets in Alaska.

The first-place individual finishers and relay teams from the region meets — Region III (Kodiak, Kenai Peninsula and Matanuska Valley schools), Region IV (Anchorage area), Region VI (Southeast) and Region VI — automatically qualify for the state meet and the next best 12 individual results and next best four relay times also advance.

Gallegos also posted the fastest times in Friday’s preliminaries of the boys 300-meter hurdles (43.79 seconds) and 110 hurdles (16.36) to advance into today’s Region VI finals. Finals for the long jump, boys discus and girls shot put are scheduled for 9 this morning and the running finals are set to begin at 10 o’clock.