She's plenty healthy

CEDAR RAPIDS - Don't tell Iowa City West sprinter McKennan Cronbaugh her hamstring is not fully healed.

Her performance at the Mississippi Valley Conference Valley Division meet last night at Cedar Rapids Prairie should have convinced otherwise.

“Her little short of one hundred percent is still pretty good,“ said West Coach Mike Parker, whose Women of Troy beat out runner-up Cedar Falls, 202-192, to win a10th straight Valley division title. “She looked better throughout the night, which I am excited about.”

Host Cedar Rapids Prairie finished third with 108.5 points, and Cedar Rapids Jefferson was fourth with 88.

Cronbaugh was limited to a single attempt in the long jump and won it with a jump of 16 feet, 11 inches.

“I only jumped once, but he was just saving me for the rest of the meet,” Cronbaugh said.“The hamstring is good.”

Cronbaugh won two more gold medals in the sprint medley and 400-meter relay. She narrowly missed a fourth when Cedar Falls edged their 800-relay team by a half-second.

Valley powers West and Cedar Falls combined to win 16 of 19 events.

“Cedar Falls is obviously an awesome team,” Parker said. “Last year we won by one point, so this is like a landslide victory for us.”

Cedar Falls pulled within 10 points with two events to go when teammates Allison Gregg and Brianna King finished one-two in the 1500.

“My teammate Brianna and I just wanted to get out hard and go one and two,” said Gregg, who was voted athlete of the year. “When we came out on that last curve, I just said ‘go' and we took off.”

West responded with an MVC-record time of 49.21 seconds in the 400 relay, anchored by Cronbaugh.

Just remember that you're running for the conference championship,” Cronbaugh said.“We really had to push hard and make sure we got first.”

Metro winners included Jefferson's Emma Edelen, who won the discus at 125-3. Jefferson also won the shuttle hurdle relay in an MVC record 1:06.96.

Rachel Griffin won the shot put for Prairie at 36-6.