BLUE SPRINGS, Mo. — At a different point in the season, Platte County could have showcased top-end talent and pushed for a team trophy in the inaugural Kansas City Relays this past weekend. Instead, the Pirates started a likely quick reformatting process against notable competition.
Platte County senior Ty Christopher crosses the finish line in the 100-meter race of the Kansas City Relays on Saturday afternoon at Blue Springs South High School.
The scheduled two-day event ended up compacted into a long and Saturday with schools from nearly a dozen states converging on Blue Spring South High School.
Platte County scored just 10 team points from fourth-place finishes for senior Cale Buntz (javelin) and Ty Christopher (200-meter run). More significantly, the Pirates have likely lost senior star sprinter Braiden Stevens (foot) for the season, while senior Jackson Goodale sat out after a minor hamstring issue earlier in the week.
Without those two in the fold, Platte County didn’t even enter a 4×100-meter relay with the lineup now in flux after returning all four members of a group that ran the fastest-time in state history last season.
However, Platte County senior Adeboye Akande ran a career-best 10.87 seconds in the 100, winning the eighth heat. He finished in 10th overall and came in faster than three of the runners in the 10th and fastest heat. That group included Christopher (17th, 10.99).
Earlier in the day, Christopher placed fourth in the 200 at 21.98 while Akande tied for 10th (22.20).
Platte County senior Cale Buntz takes his final attempt in the javelin during the Kansas City Relays on Saturday at Blue Springs South High School.
Christopher, Akande and fellow senior Adam Gisler, who ran in the Winnetonka Invitational earlier in the week, all were on Platte County’s 4×100 team with Stevens last year that ran the first sub-41-second time in Missouri history in the Suburban Conference White Division Championships. The Pirates then set a state meet record in the preliminaries of the Class 5 MSHSAA Track and Field Championships, only for Lee’s Summit to win the final and knock that mark back to second.
Stevens scratched out of the remainder of his events after feeling pain in his foot during the recent Kearney Classic Invitational. Followups on the injury revealed a fracture in his foot, likely bringing his season — and career — to an early finish after he repeatedly set the school record in the 100 and placing fifth at state as a junior.
In addition, Stevens, Christopher, Akande and Goodale recently set Platte County’s school record in the 4×200, breaking the mark the same group set last season.
Goodale and Christopher ran on Platte County’s state championship 4×400 relay as juniors, but the graduation of Josh Fraker — now a standout at Northwest Missouri State — and an injury to junior Jack Johnson leave that unit in more of a rebuild. Goodale anchored the 4×100 at Kearney after Stevens scratched and likely takes on that role moving forward for the still-promising group.
Platte County senior Elijah Jackson finishes the 800-meter race with pyrotechnics going off in the background Saturday during the Kansas City Relays at Blue Springs South High School.
That leaves Buntz as the only returning individual state medalist on Platte County’s active roster. He placed fifth in the javelin as a junior in Class 5 and already threw further than the school record he set last season three times in four starts this year.
That included Buntz’s 54.14-meter mark on Saturday, the second-best throw of his career behind the 55.14 meters he recorded in the season-opening Liberty North Time Trials. That distance stood third until the final attempts after him with Holcomb sophomore Cooper Cranston besting him by 6 centimeters.
The top two finishers were both from Piper (Kansas).
In addition to the sprinters, Platte County could use Goodale in the 400, while senior Elijah Jackson continues to build a strong case as a state contender in the 800. He placed 11th in the event Saturday at a career-best 1:56.51, now ranking third in school history behind only Connor Currence (1:55.59, 2024) and Fraker (1:55.07, 2025).
Prior to this season, Jackson had not run better than 1:59.14, a mark he set at conference as a junior.
Platte County senior Blake Herron also set a PR in the 3,200, placing 13th at 9:36.54. He ran the event for just the second time this season and then came back in the evening to participate in the Jim Ryun Mile with the namesake of the race — the first high school athlete to run a sub-4-minute mile — in attendance most of the day.
Platte County junior Nick Flowers runs a leg of the 4×1,600-meter relay Saturday afternoon during the Kansas City Relays at Blue Springs South High School.
Herron came in 42nd out of 113 entries in the mile at 4:28.98.
With all of the unknowns and individual focuses, Platte County’s lone relay entrant ended up being a unique 4×1,600-meter team of junior Nick Flowers, sophomores Landon McKinzie, Tate Stone and Josiah O’Rourke. The Pirates were ninth at 19:00.78.
Outside of Buntz, Platte County junior Kyler Parker and sophomore Miller Bigus were the only other field entries. Parker came in 16th in the discus (40.21 meters) and 21s in the shot put (13.41 meters). Bigus was 27th in the discus (36.91 meters).
Winnetonka Invitational
With Platte County’s roster divided between the week’s two meets, Gisler earned a win in the 100 at 11.30 on Thursday at North Kansas City District Activities Complex in Kansas City. Wind slowed times across the board, but he held off Oak Park freshman Creighton Lehr by 0.14 of a second.
Platte County still finished second in the final team standings with 100 points — just eight behind Maryville. The Pirates were notably strong in hurdles in addition to a pair of top-three relays.
In the 300 hurdles, Platte County junior Maverick Troncin set a PR for a third straight race, this time hitting 41.72 to finish second. The Pirates also went third (junior Jaden Mathurin, career-best 15.43) and fifth (junior Zaden Batey, 16.11) in the 110 hurdles.
Platte County’s 4×200 of sophomores Bryce Stusse, Jayger Luedke, Caleb Hill and Cassius Guillory finished as runnerup despite none of those runners having a spot in the current No. 1 lineup. Stusse, Guillory and juniors Jordan Moore and Nick Fetterman combined to place the Pirates third in the 4×400.
Guillory added a third in the open 200 at 23.13.
With both Herron and Jackson committed to the KC Relays, Platte County junior Jackson Townsend came in fourth in both the 800 (2:05.08) and 1,600 (4:47.20). Both times were PRs.
Platte County freshman Elijah Lewis also set an impressive career-best in the shot put at 13.34 meters to place fifth, although he bettered that at Tuesday’s Andy Keefer 9th Grade Invitational (13.92).
