Mount Vernon girls pursue a rare championship trifecta

MOUNT VERNON — Surely, you’ve heard of the 5-Second Rule.

That’s the myth that it’s OK to eat food that has been dropped on the floor, as long as it is quickly retrieved.

The Mount Vernon High School girls’ track and field team has a 5-Minute Rule. That pertains not to dropped food, but to dropped batons and other disappointments.

“You get 5 minutes to be upset, then it’s on to the next thing,” junior sprinter Cali Whitaker said.

That goes for highlights, as well as lowlights.

“You get just a little time to be excited or be bummed,” sophomore distance runner Evelyn Moeller said. “Then you have to flush it.”

Surely, adversity will arise during the 19-event, three-day state meet, which begins at 9 a.m. Thursday at Drake Stadium in Des Moines.

The key is to ride out the storms that come along

“If you expect perfection, you’re in trouble,” Mount Vernon Coach Kory Swart said. “If you embrace that adversity, you’re in good shape.”

And if the peaks significantly outweigh the valleys, the Mustangs could do something that has been done only once before.

The only time a school has won girls’ state championships in the fall, winter and spring “major” sports — volleyball, basketball and track — in a single school year? Mount Vernon in 2009-10.

“I wasn’t aware,” Swart said. “I love the fact that we have the opportunity to talk about it.”

Mount Vernon has the first two legs of that “triple crown” under its belt. Whitaker and Sydney Maue (a senior high jump specialist who cleared 5 feet, 10 inches last week) were prominent members of the volleyball champions.

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“That would be super cool,” Whitaker said of the Mustangs’ possibility of the unprecedented. “Everybody here in this community is so supportive.”

Dive a little deeper, and the success of 2024-25 Mount Vernon girls’ athletics becomes even more staggering.

* Led by 190-pound state champion Libby Dix and 110-pound runner-up Kiersten Swart, the Mustangs were state team runners-up in wrestling. Both of them are key elements this weekend.

* And with Moeller as a pacesetter, they were third at state in cross country.

In track, the top three teams in each class earn trophies. Mount Vernon was fourth in 2024.

“We felt we left a trophy in Des Moines last year. We’re motivated to go out and get it,” Coach Swart said.

“I know which color the girls want.”

To reach the summit, and to complete that fall/winter/spring championship trifecta, the Mustangs must outperform their pre-meet seeds.

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Dix, for example, is seeded ninth in the discus, 13th in the shot put and capable of much more in both.

“I had a rough (state-qualifying meet). I had my eyes on the big picture, and I should have my focus on one thing at a time,” Dix said. “I should have focused on the little things before the big picture.”

Maue’s midseason return has been a boost. A volleyball commit at Arkansas, Maue is a two-time top-three state finisher (for Center Point-Urbana in 2023, for Mount Vernon last year).

Because of painful shin splints, she sat out the first half of the season, then “I realized I was missing it,” she said.

Maue’s career high had been 5-7, as a sophomore. She went 5-8 at the conference meet, 5-10 at regionals.

“To go up another 3 inches, it’s amazing,” she said. “Our lifting program helped me get my vertical up.”

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Maue is the top seed in the high jump. Whitaker is No. 2 in the 400, No. 3 in the 200. Moeller (800/1,500) and Dix (shot/discus) should score well. So should several relays.

“We have a nice complementary team. We can come at you from a lot of different directions,” Swart said. “We’re not a one-person team. We’ve got several that can step up and help us a lot.”

Adel-DeSoto-Minburn is the reigning 3A champion and the favorite to repeat. To dethrone ADM, it’s a tall task.

“We focus on ourselves,” Whitaker said. “The best we can do is to be all we can be.”

One event — and five minutes — at a time.

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Comments: jeff.linder@thegazette.com