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Wyoming Valley Conference individuals and teams put together a series of impressive performances Saturday when many of the top athletes from around the state made an early visit to the site of the state championships for the 89th annual Jack Roddick/Shippensburg University High School Track and Field Invitational.Northwest&#8217;s Tyler Burger led the way winning two state titles and coming within a quarter of a second of a third while helping the Rangers finish third out of 33 teams that scored points in the Class AA boys division.Katie Kravitsky and Ally Rome from Dallas and Emily Johns and Dominic Hockenbury from Lake-Lehman won state titles while three relay teams and two individuals from the WVC earned silver medals.Dallas, Coughlin and Lake-Lehman all finished in the top 10 in the Class AAA girls team standings.&#8220;Going to Shippensburg was mainly to get the guys down there and get used to the track a little bit,&#8221; Northwest coach Todd Culver said Sunday. &#8220;Hopefully, if they&#8217;re fortunate enough to get there at the end of the season, they&#8217;re more comfortable with being there.&#8220;Obviously, some of them have already been there before, but there are some others that are hoping to get there as well. And, there&#8217;s some good competition.&#8221;Burger was third in the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association Championships in the Class AA 300-meter hurdles last season. In his return visit Saturday, Burger won both the 300 hurdles and 110 high hurdles.Burger also was part of a 1,600 relay team that set a school record and missed a title by 21-hundredths of a second to finish second in 3:30.80. Austin Mazonkey, Tanner Kennedy and Zachary Briggs were the others on the relay team that ran together in competition for the first time this season.&#8220;It was pretty fun to put that whole team together,&#8221; said Culver, who has gone with other combinations in dual meets to use those athletes in more individual events. &#8220;If everybody&#8217;s healthy, we&#8217;ll try to run it at districts as well.&#8221;Ben Krouse added another second-place finish for Northwest with a career-best 12-9 in the pole vault.The Rangers finished with 49 points, just three out of second place. Camp Hill outscored Bedford, 95-52, for the title.Curtis Whitmire was third for Northwest in the shot put with 41-10.Tanner Kennedy finished in 23.55 in the 200, and Briggs, recorded a time of 52.19 in the 400, each placed fourth. Kennedy was competing at Shippensburg for the first time.Hockenbury, a PIAA state champion in the 3,200 last season and in cross country last fall, won the 1,600 title by more than 3 1/2 seconds in 4:20.21.The 10 points produced by Hockenbury put Lake-Lehman in 23rd place out of 33 teams that scored.Team points were scored for top-eight finishes.Northwest was 24th out of 27 teams in Class AA girls with eight points. Kennedy McClain took fifth in both the discus (91-8) and javelin (107-0).Dallas finished third with 30 points, Coughlin seventh with 27 1/2 and Lake-Lehman tied for ninth with 20 in Class AAA girls where Susquehanna Township won the title.Kravitsky won the high jump by clearing 5-4 and Rome, another state cross country champion, won the 1,600 in 10:58.46.Lindsey Oremus took second in the 1,600 run in 5:00.30 while Rome just missed scoring in another event, taking ninth.Nikki Wren took seventh in the javelin with a throw of 116-5.Kaitlyn Kochanski was part of a large contingent of Dallas athletes who met difficult qualifying standards to get to the meet. She was ninth in the shot put and 12th in the discus.Nathaniela Bourdeau had a huge day for Coughlin. She placed third in the 100-meter dash in 12.45, tied for fifth in the 200 in 25.73 and was part of two second-place relay teams.&#8220;You have to be really good to get into the meet,&#8221; Coughlin coach Paul McGrane said. &#8220;It&#8217;s a good barometer of how you can do on the state level.&#8220;Nathaniela came in third in the 100 by five-hundredths of a second and the two girls were state medalists from last year.&#8221;Mary Tona, Skyler Panattieri and Tamar Bourdeau, Nathaniela&#8217;s sister, were also on the relay teams that finished the 400 in 49.91 and 1,600 in 4:04.75.Nathaniela Bourdeau brought the Crusaders from fourth place to second during her anchor leg of the 400 relay, edging Ephrata by one-hundredth of a second, Hempfield by two-hundredths and State College by seven-hundredths.&#8220;Nathaniela didn&#8217;t get to number two until about two inches from the finish line,&#8221; McGrane said. &#8220;She was back pretty far.&#8220;She had a really good anchor leg.&#8221;Tamar Bourdeau was seventh in the 300 hurdles in 47.21.Lake-Lehman scored all of its points in the throws.Johns, a sophomore, won the discus with 128-2 and placed third in the shot put with 39-7. Teammate Cayle Spencer was fifth in the javelin with 122-9. Pittston Area was 28th out of 52 teams that scored in Class AAA girls.Olivia Giambra led the way, taking sixth with in the long jump (16-7) and triple jump (35-7). Mia Cain was seventh with a high jump of 5-0 and Madison Mimnaugh was eighth in the 800 in 2:24.25. Wyoming Area&#8217;s Vanessa Shedlock was eighth in the long jump with 16-5.Coughlin had the only WVC points in Class AAA boys where Nick Yanoski was seventh at 12-9.McGrane said one indication of the level of competition in the meet was that David Sadvary ran the 3,200 in 9:49.79 to come within four-hundredths of a second of the school record, but still finished 15th out of 29 runners.The PIAA Championships are scheduled for May 22-23. WVC athletes have to qualify for the state meet through the District 2 Championships, which are at Scranton Memorial Stadium, May 11 in Class AA and May 12 in Class AAA.

Wyoming Valley Conference has strong performances at Shippensburg University High School Track and Field Invitational