Mankato East's 4x400 relay is coming off not only a Championships run last June but also a win at April's Hamline Elite Meet (Photo provided by Ben Vanderbosch)
AA Boys
Participating Teams And Their Coaches
Section 1AA: Stewartville - Aaron Meyer
Section 2AA: Mankato East - Jon Dierks
Section 3AA: St. Croix Lutheran - Brent Schact
Section 4AA: Totino-Grace - Traci Bennington
Section 5AA: Sartell-St. Stephen - Ross Anderson
Section 6AA: Willmar - Jerry Popp
Section 7AA: Chisago Lakes - Ken Orwell
Section 8AA: Detroit Lakes - William Kvebak
Wild Card: Mankato West - Kaleb Lindsey-Stevens
With larger school sizes and more athletes to select from, the squads of Class AA will not have the same issues as their Class A counterparts. The top teams competing here are deeper, stronger across each event, and don't usually have any particular event area that is a true weakness. Of course, with more quality athletes to chose from, there are also more tight competitions and less margin for error, especially when so few elite athletes truly stand head and shoulders ahead of their competition. Perhaps only Totino-Grace's Kevin Dado, Mankato West's Jake Makela, Mankato East's Roderick Miller, and Sartell-St. Stephen's Daniel Ufearo can realistically make a strong case to be lone front-runners to win their events. The rest are wide open with any number of schools potentially able to rack up the points.
The outcome of the team competition will likely fall in favor of either Mankato East or Willmar. Folks may remember the Hamline Elite Meet earlier this year in which Mankato East's 4x400, the defending state champions in the event, thrilled the crowd to cross the line in 3:22.93 for the win. That team of Roderick Miller, Jacob Baynes, Isaiah Baynes, and Desmond Bassett will be the key to East's run for the title. Most likely they won't all run on their 4x400 relay on Saturday, but depending on how coach Jon Dierks decides to arrange their events, they could give their team a huge head start in the sprinting and relay events.
The jumping events will also be crucial for Mankato East, led by juniors Ben Ziegler and Ryan Hannegrefs, and it will need to get as many points out of its hurdlers (consisting of Ziegler, Isaiah Baynes, and Muse Abdi) as it can. But while Mankato East will need to rely on a number of its outstanding athletes to remain competitive, the defending champions from Willmar won't have that same problem. Good in every event, but outstanding in none, it is entirely possible that the team led by the stellar coaching of Jerry Popp could walk away with a championship without having had a single athlete or relay win an event.
And they are young too, with every key athlete on their team except thrower Louis Russell, sprinter Ryan Liimatta, and the multi-talented Jacob Minnick being an underclassman. Two freshmen, Hudeife Mire and Mason Wendt, head the team's distance runners while two juniors, Bello White and Ty Christianson, will be scoring key points for them in the sprints. But the hurdles are the place where Willmar could make or break the competition, as Alec Nibaur, Muhyadin Mohamed, and Musab Dahir match very closely with Mankato East's crew, and whoever wins the head-to-head matchups there could very likely win the whole thing.
The competition opens up a bit after those two teams, but with a number of things breaking right, Sartell-St. Stephen or Mankato West could upset one of those two favorites. Sartell is led by the best and deepest distance crew of these nine teams, headed by Alex Nemeth, Nick Juntunen, and Ryan Fernholz (underclassmen one and all), and thrower Daniel Ufearo has a strong potential to sweep the throwing events. But a hole in the hurdle events and lack of depth in the jumps are the biggest challenges for Sartell to overcome if they hope to come away with the win. Mankato West is a similar situation, having the best combination of jumpers and vaulters out of all these nine teams led by Jonathan Sikel and Matthew Thompson (plus the meet's best short sprinter in Jake Makela), but with little potential to score significant points in the distance events.
The remaining teams probably have a few too many weaknesses to seriously challenge for a team title but have potential to make a good name for themselves. Stewartville's sprinter/jumpers Spencer Burton and Kyle Prondzinski will keep their team in the competition well enough, but they don't have a lot of depth to back them up. The same is true of Totino-Grace, for whom distance star Kevin Dado will certainly provide big points for whichever events his coaches place him in, but the depth also simply won't be there (particularly in the field events) to mount a serious threat for a team title. By comparison, Detroit Lakes has more depth than even some of the better teams, but probably not enough athletes who can really come away with big points. And rounding out the competition will be Chisago Lakes and Saint Croix Lutheran, the former team with good potential for big points in the sprinting events and the latter team with a few excellent jumpers and hurdlers.