OREM — Heidi Magill paced the Mountain View girls track team to a first-place lead after the first day of competition at the Region 7 Track and Field Championships held at Orem High School.
Mountain View racked up 78 points, 33 more than second-place Orem.
The Bruins are also sitting pretty in the standings on the boys side — with 80.5 team points — as they received a stellar performance from the region favorite in the discus. Leif Arrhenius turned in a throw of 192 feet, 6 inches, more than 65 feet ahead of his closest opponent, Pleasant Grove's Adam Gines.
Magill was able to give her team a comfortable lead going into the final day of events with her expected win in the 1,600 meter with a time of 5:13.01.
Steve Strickland contributed to the Bruin lead as he narrowly edged Orem's Chris Foster in the men's 1,600.
Sean Welch added to Pleasant Grove's point total with his first-place finish in the high jump. The Viking boys finished the first day in second place with 44 points, with Lone Peak nipping at their heels with 38 points.
The Lady Bruins continued to tally points, this time in the field events, as Amy Mack was able to hold off Orem's Melodie Green with a throw of 104'4. Green only finished two feet behind at 102'6.
Lone Peak's Carly Lords placed first in the shot put, followed by teammate Brandy Fox.
Malory Minster scored for Orem with her second-place finish in the long jump behind Mountain View's Leesa Henderson.
The remaining finals will begin at 3:30 p.m. Thursday at Orem High School.
Region 6
At Provo, rain dominated the first day of the Region 6 track championships at Timpview High, putting a damper on much of Wednesday's afternoon performances.
Spanish Fork freshman Diane Stewart did win the girls long jump with a jump of 16 feet, 5 inches, and posted a region-championship record time of 14.76 in the 100-meter hurdles trials, shaving more than a quarter-second off the previous best.
In all, seven individual region championships were determined by the close of the drizzly afternoon. The boys' pole vault was contested a day earlier at Mountain View, with American Fork's Chris Muehlmann winning with a vault of 12 feet.
Much of the day was spent qualifying for the finals to be contested Thursday. The top four finishers in the regional events automatically advance to next week's 4A state championships at BYU.
Some of the region's top performers who had already qualified for state by meeting state standards in previous meets, ran as "rabbits" to help pace teammates to qualify either by time or place, or tried to qualify in another event.
The tightest event was the boys 1,600 meters, where less than two seconds separated the top four finishers, with several others finishing just out of state-advancing places. Robert Finicom won with a time of 4 minutes, 29.44 seconds, followed by teammate Jason Baker (4:30.64), American Fork's Dale Golding (4:31.16) and Provo's Reagan Frey (4:31.21).
Spanish Fork swept first place in the day's other boys finals — Trent Bingham in the high jump at 6 feet, 5 inches; Sateki Nau in the shot put with a throw of 45 feet, 2.5 inches; and Abe Lee in the javelin at 161-8.
In the other girls final, American Fork's Leslie Rose won the 3,200 meters with a time of 12 minutes, 1.33 seconds.
Team scoring was not available.
Contributing: Staff writer Scott Taylor