By Rich Witer

605 Sports

SIOUX FALLS — Late Friday during the preliminaries of the boys 200-meter dash Gregory’s Kade Stukel clutched his hamstring at the end of the race. 

The cramp hit the Gorilla senior about halfway into Friday’s race. 

“I felt it about 90 meters into the race,” Stukel said. “Some of the other competitors behind me told me they saw a ball on the back of my leg but I just gutted it out for the last half of the race.”

Stukel had a full slate of finals races to run Saturday and immediately following the race the Gregory rehabilitation staff went to work. 

“My dad rubbed out my leg until it about bruised,” he said. “When I got to the hotel, I got in an ice bath and then got in the hot tub and did both of those things twice. After that I had a roller come in, I did leg compressions. My dad came in and rolled me out again and my friends rolled me out a second time.”

After getting to bed about 11:00 p.m. Stukel arrived at Howard Wood field and started warming up. The hamstring didn’t feel great.

“I wasn’t even sure I was going to run but I made the decision I was going to do it about 10 minutes before the race,” he said. 

What happened next Stukel calls unexplainable. 

He jumped out of the blocks, rocketed to full speed and crossed the line in first place with a career best time of (:10.86).

“I saw the time and I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “All the glory to God because I think we all prayed a lot last night.”

Stukel and the Gregory 800-meter relay team qualified first Friday but that race immediately followed the 100-meter dash and Stukel scratched. His Gregory teammates Eli Fogel, Daniel Mitchell, Paul Sinclair and Luke Stukel finished fourth in the 800-meter relay (1:33.11). 

Shortly after the 800-meter relay Stukel and his teammates took to the track for the 400-meter relay. After getting the stick around in the first three legs, anchor Kade Stukel got the baton about 10-feet behind the leaders.

Once again he found another gear as Gregory won the race (:44.24).

“I guess I just like racing people,” Stukel said. “I did the same thing at Howard Wood in both the 400-meter relay and 800-meter relay.”

Late in the day Stukel ran his last race in a Gregory uniform, the 200-meter dash. His fourth-place finish (:23.50) scored five more points for the Gorillas. 

Right about the time Stukel ran the 200-meter dash Daniel Mitchell was winning the high jump. About 30-minutes later Luke Stukel anchored the 1,600 meter relay to a fifth place finish. When all the dust had cleared Gregory and Ipswich both finished with 54 points to tie for the Class B state team title. 

“We knew we had a chance coming into state,” Stukel said. “I wasn’t feeling great and our medley didn’t do as well as we hoped so our sprinters, our high jumper and our distance runners needed to step up and we all did that today.”