FOSTORIA - Senior twins Zach Alexander and Nathan Alexander from Old Fort closed out their four years in the Midland Athletic Championships with a combined total of 44 points, which was enough to help Old Fort finish runner-up to team champion Seneca East.
Zach attempted a difficult distance triple which included a win in the 1,600 (4:32.46), a photo finish in the 800 where he ended up second by just .01 to Brandon Distel of Carey (1:59.76 to 1:59.77), and a strong runner-up finish in the 3,200 (10:13.79). He also helped the Stockaders take third in the 4x800 (8:39.52).
Nathan took the pole vault in a meet record 15 feet, while finishing third in the 100 (11.49) and seventh in the 110 hurdles (16.83). He qualified to the finals of the 200 as well but didn't race in order to vault.
Going into the meet, the gameplan for the two was to win as many individual titles as possible to help Old Fort finish the highest it could.
"We had some high hopes and I don't think we quite got them. I'm not completely disappointed." Zach Alexander said.
Both Alexander and Distel were less than .1 seconds off the meet record of 1:59.7 in the 800 held by Calvert's Matt Hammer.
"I did terrible planning with the hurdles; I figured we'd have 10 minutes between the hurdles and the 100, and you know, that's 30 seconds not 10 minutes. We were hoping to get a lot of individual wins today, that's why we didn't do very many relays, so we could try to contend for, if not for first, second, but it didn't go quite as planned."
It was only seconds after that when both heard on the loudspeaker that the team had finished runner-up.
Zach is going to Akron University in the fall while Nathan is traveling to the other side of the state to vault at the University of Cincinnati.
Both Nathan and Zach made trips to state as sophomores - Nathan in the pole vault and Zach in the 3,200 - but both failed to make it out of the tough Tiffin regional last year. This year, both want to return to state but they would like to bring a couple of relays along: the 4x400 and 4x800.
