Medford High School's Luke Johnston already has a big collection of first place, gold medals from the Minnesota state track and field meets. The senior wheelchair athlete will attempt to three-peat in both the shot put and discus at this week's meet at Hamline University is St. Paul.

In 2018 Johnston won the shot put with a throw of 21-feet-2.75-inches, which was an all-time Minnesota record. He enters state on a throw of 23-feet-8-inches from last week's section meet. The shot put, wheelchair division, is at 3:30 pm on Friday, June 7.

Johnston set the state meet record in discus, wheelchair division, with a toss of 48-feet-11-inches in 2018. He threw the discus 53-feet-3-inches at sections. This year's competition is Saturday, June 8 at 4:45 pm at Klas Field.

Johnston won each of those events as a sophomore as well. He enters with the top throw in each discipline this year.

Tigers senior Rachael Luebbe is also back at state this season, competing in the high jump. She placed 12th last year with a leap of five-feet-two-inches. She has the top seed entering Saturday's event at 5-feet-four-inches. Her event is at 3:30 pm Friday.

Medford coach Kevin Werk is very happy with where Johnston and Luebbe are as the top seeds in all three of their events. He also indicated that taking 14 athletes to section finals last week was a high-water mark for the program.

Among the other top finishes at sections for was another Medford school record in the 4x800 with Tyler Strusa, Brett Johnson, Ryan Hermanstorfer and Garrett Fitzgerald who finished seventh while breaking their previous record by eleven seconds. Emma Kniefel took sixth in the triple jump. Kinsey Cronin captured seventh in shot put. Brett Johnson was eighth in pole vault. Luebbe was eighth in triple jump.

 

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