Football: Speed shows in football team's Ironman competition

• Photo: Ironman

Farmington’s Nathan Graham flips a tire across the Tiger Stadium turf during Monday’s Ironman competition at Farmington High School. Graham tied for first with 31 tire flips and finished in a tie for third overall.

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Farmington strength and conditioning coach Scott Meier had good news and bad news to report from the Tiger football team’s annual season-opening Ironman competition.

The bad news: The top performers didn’t score as well as in years past. The good news: The scores from the bottom half of the 67 athletes who completed the seven-event skills competition were higher than ever.

“I think it’s pretty safe to say that this is the best performing bottom half that we have ever had. This is somewhat reflected in the narrower range and smaller deviation,” Meier said. “And with a team that has fewer players, that’s even more important, because we will be counting on those kids more that when we had big teams.”

Alex Chadwick was the top overall finisher, scoring 4,288 points. He won two events, completing the L-Drill in 7.3 seconds and turning in a vertical jump of 31 1/2 inches, and had the best round of lifts when factoring in his weight. He cleaned 213 pounds, back squatted 360 pounds and bench pressed 211 pounds.

Athen Ashton placed second with 4,143 points and won the clean with a lift of 233 pounds. Third-place honors went to Nathan Graham, who scored 3,918 points thanks in part to tying with Kevin Olund for the best showing in the tire flip with 31 in 60 seconds.

Drew Hegseth, Blake Weinand, Andrew Peterson, Mason Auge, Bret Hoffman, Jack Erickson and Olund rounded out the top 10.

Other event bests were turned in by Peterson in the 40-yard dash (4.68 seconds), Hoffman in the back squat (445 pounds) and Jake Nohner in the bench press (306 pounds).

Overall, the Tigers’ performances were better than last year’s team in six out of the seven events. Compared to the Tiger teams from the last 11 years, this year’s squad ranked ninth in vertical jump, 10th in the L-Drill, seventh in the clean and back squat, eighth in bench press, third in the 40-yard dash and first (out of three) in the tire flip.

“Considering how young we are this year, I’m even happier with these team results,” Meier said. “Obviously team speed is going to be our strong area this season.”

The previous six winners of the Ironman competition are Tyler Grubb (2010), Nick Albano (2009), Isaiah Rockett (2008), Derek Waldbillig (2007), Jordan Hauschild (2006) and Carson Jones (2005).

Tags: sports, farmington, tigers, prep, football