Platte County needed a pair of school records just to have qualifiers for last spring’s Class 5 MSHSAA Track and Field Championships.
The majority of pieces from those efforts — senior long-distance phenom Andrew Johnson and juniors Brayden Eschliman and Josh Fraker plus sophomore Jackson Goodale from an ascendent 4×400-meter relay team — return this season. The only state qualifier not back will be Aaron Cordova, part of a strong senior class that keyed a runnerup finish in the Suburban Conference White Division before the Pirates faded to seventh out of 10 teams in Class 5 District 8.
Platte County’s team finishes have expectedly lagged since moving up to the state’s top tier for the postseason in 2022, but the Pirates have an all-state finisher each of the past two years.
Johnson started the process of laying claim to the title of best distance runner in program history last spring and cemented that this past fall with a second straight top-10 finish in the Class 4 MSHSAA Cross Country Championships. His true breakout came at Class 5 Sectional 4 when he erased Nathan Straubel’s prior Platte County school record in the 3,200-meter run of 9 minutes 22.36 seconds and setting the new mark at 9:18.79.
Dropping 19 seconds off of the PR from earlier in his junior season, Johnson finished second at District 8 but then became the somewhat surprise winner the following weekend. He finished the first lap of the state race in eighth place, worked as high as fourth and then moved from ninth to sixth on the final lap to earn his first career state track medal in a time of 9:25.46.
A year earlier, Chandler Steinmeir placed second in the 300-meter hurdles in Platte County’s first season in Class 5.
Platte County’s continually developing junior long-distance specialist checked off another box with a sixth-place finish in the 3,200 meters on Saturday to close out the Pirates’ two-day trip to the Class 5 Missouri State Track and Field Championships at Jeffers City High School. He didn’t quite match his school-record time from a week at earlier but became just the second in program history to achieve all-state honors in the state’s largest class.
Johnson’s progression from fall of his freshman year to now can be considered remarkable by almost any measure. He started his cross country career outside of the top-10 in the lineup but earned a spot on a state qualifying team by the end of the season, and he ended a nearly decade-long drought for that program without an all-state runner in the fall of 2022.
In track, Johnson went sub-11 minutes in the 3,200 for the first time late in the spring of his freshman year and did not break 10 minutes until the first meet of his junior campaign. He had not advanced out of districts prior to last spring before vaulting all the way up to all-state in a single postseason.
Platte County’s quartet of Cordova, Eschliman, Fraker and Goodale competed in state preliminaries for the 4×400, seemingly in position to qualify for the finals and earn a medal. Instead, the Pirates ended up stuck in seventh in the second of two heats and finished in that spot at 3:28.24 — 15th out of 16 overall and almost 8 seconds off the mark needed to advance.
A combination of runners rarely used before the postseason due to various minor injuries and weather-canceled meets, Platte County qualified third out of District 4 by cutting more than 6 seconds off their PR. The Pirates then followed up Johnson’s record run at Sectional 4 with one of their own in the very next race, placing third again in 3:21.62, erasing a Class 4 state medal-winning mark of 3:23.95 set by Aaron Brown, Mateo Tania, Kevin Schultz and Aliek Reed in 2014 while trimming another 4 seconds off the season-best time in the event.
Eschliman and Fraker have been the top 400 runners for the program the past two seasons, while Goodale seemingly came out of nowhere to anchor the 4×100, 4×200 and 4×400 relays by the end of his freshman campaign.
Platte County accomplished all of that without returning senior Connor Currence, who ran on the 4×400 as a sophomore in his first season on the track team but missed most of last season due to a stress fracture in his foot. He returns and could help fill out the lineup and provide the Pirates with another potential standout individual.
With Fraker and Eschliman back in the 400, Goodale can also run at least one sprint race, while Currence could be a factor in both the open 400 and 800.
Currence could also help Platte County restock a solid 4×800 team that qualified for sectionals with Johnson and senior Kade Meinke in the fold. The Pirates do lose Ryan McCoy and Gavin Jenks to graduation from that quartet but also have junior Tanner Jenks and sophomore Blake Herron as potential contributors, especially if Johnson puts a focus on the 1,600 and 3,200 in his senior season.
Platte County also returns seniors Jackson Thornton (high jump) and Kevin Taylor (pole vault), junior Gus Keeton (discus) and sophomores Quinn Lightle (shot put and javelin) and Cale Buntz (javelin) from last year’s postseason entries. The Pirates will have to essentially rebuild the recently successful 4×100 and 4×200 relays with the graduation of Garrett Smith-Dean (district champion in the long jump who missed the state cut at sectionals) and Cameron Wolfe (a sprinter and standout in discus).
In addition, Platte County junior Caden McGhee expects to miss the entire season after suffering a torn ACL during a football game against North Kansas City in the fall.
Smith-Dean, Wolfe and senior Jordan Burnett were with Goodale on a 4×100 team that expected to make a run at the school record in the postseason. Instead, Burnett, who did not return to the roster, came up with a hamstring injury on the initial handoff that led to a disqualification. McGhee ran on the 4×200 with Goodale, Burnett and Cordova on the 4×200 that finished sixth at District 8.
Platte County also graduated Carter Salzman, a two-time sectional qualifier in pole vault (Class 4 2021 and Class 5 2023).
