GILA RIDGE

lar body types to me and so I made a joke that maybe I’ll be pretty good at this,” Slater said. “And then here we are this year.”

Slater was seeded third in the event going in, and won by 3 feet, 2 inches over second-place Makayla Garcia of Youngker.

The Hawks came close to winning several other events.

In the boys triple jump, North entered the finals in first with a personal-best mark of 44 feet, 5 inches, and stayed there until nearly the very end. But on their final attempts, Mesquite’s Michael Brown went 44-11.5 and Higley’s Keith Wesley went 44-8.5 to knock North down to third.

“Unfortunately (a state title) was kind of ripped away at the last second there, but I was really happy with (North),” Ploude said. “He did a lot of the little things that we’ve been working on; put them all together at the right time and hit a big jump.”

Ploude said he hopes that’ll carry over into Saturday, when North will enter the long jump competition seeded sixth.

Corners, meanwhile, settled for second in the girls long jump at 18 feet, 4 1/4 inches — half a foot behind champion Jadyn Mays of North Canyon.

It was the fifth top-four medal in three years for Corners, who last year took second in the triple jump and third in the long jump, and two years ago took fourth in the long jump and fourth in the 100 meters.

She’ll have a chance to add to that medal count Saturday, when she’ll compete in the triple jump as the top overall seed and also the 100 and the 200. In prelims Saturday, she finished fourth in the 200 (25.35) and tied-for-eighth in the 100 (12.35).

While Slater, Corners and North — as well as Stewart, who took third in the girls discus at 120-8 — were expected to contend for medals, Duarte in the shot put was not necessarily.

He entered the event seeded 10th, but PR’d by about two feet — breaking the school record in the process — to finish fourth at 49 feet, 8 1/2 inches.

“I was just trying to get everything to click together, trying to upset some people and prove people wrong,” Duarte said.

Marquez was another who outperformed his seed, finishing sixth in the 1,600 meters in a personal-best 4:23.80 after entering the event ranked 15th.

In the 400 meters, Hartman clocked a personalbest 50.27 — sixth best on the day — to qualify for finals.