Scott repeats state medal run
By Sam Waller
Moran senior Alli Scott duplicated her medal haul from a year ago at the Class 1A state track meet on Saturday, May 13, claiming gold in the 100-meter hurdles and silver in the 300 hurdles, and setting a 1A meet record in the process.
“I was just thinking it’s my senior year, my last high school track meet,” Scott said. “I’ll never be able to run again, so I just gave it everything I had.”
Scott, making her third state appearance at Austin’s Mike A. Myers Stadium, now has twice as many state gold medals as Moran had produced in the previous 50 years.
“I couldn’t be any prouder of Alli for what she’s done this year and the last three years,” Moran coach John Hughes said. “She’s just one of those exceptional athletes who comes around every now and then. No matter what you ask them to do, they’re going to do it, and they’re going to do it beyond belief.”
Scott added a fifth-place finish in the high jump, putting Moran in a tie for eighth place in the team standings with 20 points, a two-point increase over a year ago.
In successfully defending her title in the 100 hurdles, Scott ran 15.42 seconds to break the 1A meet record of 15.67 set by Alexandra Hensley of Menard in 2018.
“Alli had control of the race from the start,” Hughes said. “She was over that first hurdle and gone before anybody else knew what was going on.”
While the time was off Scott’s career best of 15.02 run at the Region II-1A meet, it was still nearly a quarter of a second ahead of the field. The top four finishers all ran under 16 seconds, while none of the rest broke 17 seconds.
In the 300 hurdles, Scott ran 47.47 to finish 0.51 seconds behind Silverton freshman Maddie Francis, who had the fastest qualifying time.
“(Francis) came out of nowhere just in the last few weeks,” Hughes said. “She popped up at area and regional.”
Scott’s time was a marked improvement over her regional time of 48.16, run in high wind, but off the career-best 46.31 she ran at state last year.
“Alli really never got challenged in the 300s at all this year,” Hughes said. “She’d get out in front of people and hit cruise control. I wish she’d gotten pushed more.”
Scott cleared 4 feet, 10 inches in the high jump, the same mark she had last year when she finished eighth.
Thunderstorms delayed the start of competition for more than two hours Saturday morning.
“It was really a waiting game,” Scott said. “We didn’t know if it would be delayed to the next day or what was happening. It was stressful, but at the same time I had a good experience.”
In addition to totally disrupting the meet schedule, the storms left athletes competing on an extremely wet surface.
“The high jump didn’t go as well as we hoped,” Hughes said. “I really thought she could win, but it just wasn’t her day in that.”
Scott passed on the opening height of 4-6, then missed on her first two attempts at 4-8 before clearing. She cleared 4-10 on her first try before missing three times at 5-0. Three competitors went out at 4-10. Scott was one of three to go out at 5-0.
