ST. PAUL – Three Austin track and field athletes had a strong showing at the Minnesota Class AA State Track and Field meet in Hamline University Saturday.

Austin senior Rachel Quandt finished her AHS track and field career on a high note as she was able to get on the podium for the first time. Quandt wasn’t able to re-set her school record, but she still ran a time of 15.10 seconds to take ninth place in the 100-hurdles.

Quandt ran in Friday’s preliminaries, she went back to Austin for her graduation ceremony Friday night and she was back in St. Paul Saturday morning to run in the finals.

“I’m just really grateful that I got to run today in the finals,” Quandt said. “It was a really busy time, but it helped keep my mind off the race and it calmed my nerves.”

East Ridge’s Karina Joiner won the 100-hurdles and her time of 13.94 seconds in the preliminaries is a new state record.

“It’s fun to race against someone like that and see what she does,” said Quandt, who will run a the University of South Dakota next year.

Austin sophomore Sydney Marsh put an exclamation point on a breakthrough season when she was able to clear a height in the pole vault that she had been aiming for since before the season.

Marsh cleared 10 foot, three-inches on her third vault attempt, but she wasn’t able to clear 10-9 to get into medal contention.

Before this season, Marsh was just hoping to clear ten feet and by the Section 1A meet she was hitting the 10-6 mark. After an 11th place finish at state, she’s aiming to make even bigger strides next year.

“I want to keep coming back and keep getting better. Hopefully I can get on the medal stand next year,” Marsh said. “I wasn’t sure if I wanted to keep doing [pole vault], but my coach was pushing me and telling me I would get better this year. I worked hard in the offseason and it really paid off.”

Andriana Jacobs of Rochester Century won the pole vault with a state record height of 13-3.

Austin junior Odongonga Oballa took eighth place in the 400-meter dash with a time of 58.78 seconds, which was nearly a full second faster than her preliminaries time.

“It was a good finish,” Oballa said.

Honour Finley of Bloomington Kennedy won the 400-meter dash with a time of 54.45 seconds.