Platte County’s historically accomplished senior class goes out on difficult note

An accomplished era came to an unfitting and truly unexpected conclusion this past weekend.

Inclement weather and delays hampered the Class 5 MSHSAA Track and Field Championships with nearly all of Friday’s competition eventually canceled, forcing an abbreviated and reformatted schedule for Saturday at Jefferson City High School. Almost all preliminaries were nixed in favor of timed heat finals for running events and four-attempt field competitions, outside of pole vault and high jump.

Platte County didn’t fare well, but Cale Buntz finished as Class 5 runnerup in javelin, while Ty Christopher earned a pair of medals, including the first individual all-state honors of an accomplished career (eighth, 100 meters). They were part of the Pirates’ standout senior class that came into the weekend with an outside shot at a top-four team finish and state trophy but instead endured mostly disappointing results.

Only one of Platte County’s two qualifying relays ended up on the podium with Christopher and senior Adeboye Akande dropping the baton on the second exchange of the 4×100, while the 4×400 made good on a fortuitous second chance. The Pirates’ team of Christopher, fellow seniors Jackson Goodale and Elijah Jackson and sophomore Cassius Guillory won the first heat and ended up sixth overall.

Platte County ended up scoring just 12 team points — 22nd in the final standings after a year after coming in eighth with a group of mostly underclassmen.

Buntz accounted for the majority in Saturday’s afternoon delayed javelin competition on a wet runway. He immediately went into first place with an opening throw of 55.32 meters but dropped to third after the third round.

Fox junior Gavin Pecoraro eventually took the state title after a throw of 57.68 meters — more than 6 1/2 meters better than his PR from sectionals and just the second time he ever went over 50 meters. Buntz’s final attempt moved him back to second at 57.05 meters (second-best mark of his career), and the runnerup finish improved upon his fifth-place showing in Class 5 as a junior, and he now accounts for two of Platte County’s three all-time state medals in the event.

Platte County freshman Jayden Horn ended up the team’s only qualifier to finalize his participation on Friday. He came in 14th in the shot put preliminaries at 14.75 and didn’t qualify for one of the few normally contested finals in field events that wrapped up Saturday.

Horn set a PR of 15.58 meters earlier in a breakout freshman season that might end up his only one at Platte County. His father Scorpio Horn accepted a football coaching position at Blue Springs earlier this year.

The rest of Platte County’s qualifiers were forced into a tedious stop-start process. On Friday, a torrential downpour served as the backdrop for the 4×800-meter relay before the remainder of on-track events were cancelled and all races with preliminaries were reseeded into two timed heats.

Platte County senior Adam Gisler and Christopher both made the “fast” heat of the 100 on Saturday morning, but neither were part of the pack with the best start. Christopher came in at 10.78 seconds — well off the PR of 10.55 he set as a Class 5 Sectional 4 runnerup — to place sixth in the race but eighth in the event. He gave the Pirates a medalist in the event for a second year in a row after senior Braiden Stevens came in third a year ago.

Christopher advanced to state in four events each of the past two years, but only three came in individual events — the 200 twice and the 100 this year.

Gisler turned in a 10.84 (11th overall) in the 100. His career-best ends up as a 10.66, also from the previous week’s sectional meet.

Platte County’s 4×100 then started warmups only to endure a delay of more than an hour due to another thunderstorm passing through the area. The Pirates entered as the top seed, having become the first team in Missouri history to run the event in a time under 41 seconds and then owning the state record time for the majority of the past year until Lee’s Summit West ran 40.71 at districts.

However, Lee’s Summit West false-started out of sectionals, and Platte County entered the weekend with expectations of winning the state title that would validate all of the recent accomplishments.

Gisler ran the opening leg and gave way to Christopher, last season’s anchor. However, the baton never cleanly reached Akande, and senior Jackson Goodale, who became the anchor replacement after a season-ending foot injury to Stevens in April, ended up left to longingly look for a handoff that never came his way.

Platte County ran a season-best of 40.86 at sectionals with the same group and posted the top 19 times in school history over the course of the past three seasons. This marked the first time in the past two years the Pirates dropped the baton in the event in addition to a false start last spring.

Christopher came back later to finish seventh in the fast heat and 11th overall in the 200 at 21.76 before running the first leg of a 4×400 that only reached state after Staley ended up disqualified at the conclusion of the sectional race. The Falcons were fourth, but a runner used explicit language in celebration to vacate the spot.

Originally fifth, Platte County ended up with a chance to defend the 2025 Class 5 state title. The Pirates originally expected to have three runners back from that unit, but only Christopher and Goodale were in this weekend’s lineup after offseason knee surgery prevented junior Jack Johnson from running this spring.

Christopher put Platte County in first, and Jackson and Guillory — a pair of first-time state qualifiers — kept that position. Goodale then closed out his career with a split of 49.12 to help the Pirates finish in a season-best of 3:18.95 that proved faster than the times for three teams in the second heat.

In addition to the 4×400 title and 4×100 runnerup showing, Platte County’s 4×200 of Christopher, Akande, Stevens and Goodale was all-state last year, as well, but injury and prioritization of event entries kept the Pirates from fully reloading that unit.

Stevens (100, 10.38 seconds) and Buntz (javelin, 59.32 meters) both finished with school records, while seniors made up the entirety of two of the program’s fastest 4×100 (Gisler, Stevens, Akande and Christopher; 40.83) and 4×200 (Stevens, Akande, Christopher and Goodale; 1:26.63) and half of the 4×400 (Goodale and Christopher; 3:13.80) and 4×800 (Jackson and Blake Herron, 7:48.76).

Gisler, Stevens, Akande and Christopher originally set the 4×100 school record in 2024 but didn’t advance to state until last season after running 40.83 sectionals, originally setting the Class 5 state meet record at 40.95 in preliminaries but then finishing second to Lee’s Summit in the finals. Goodale ended up on every recent iteration of the program’s fastest 4×400, starting in his freshman year with a 3:21.58. The Pirates then steadily lowered that over the next two seasons, culminating in last year’s state title-winning time of 3:13.80 that set an overall state meet record that Hazelwood East had held for nearly four decades.

At present, Cardinal Ritter’s 3:13.15 in 2019 stands as the only faster time for a Missouri team in any competition.

Platte County’s 4×200 school record came earlier this season prior to Stevens’ injury to beat last year’s state time, while the 4×800 set the mark at the 2025 Class 5 Sectional 4 meet with the Pirates incredibly finishing sixth in one of the fastest collective races for the event ever run in a Missouri meet.