Whitehall high jumper Ayden Mendoza's win led some strong
individual results at Saturday's Grand Rapids Elite Challenge, bringing
together some of the top teams in West Michigan. The Viking boys
finished 12th out of 33 scoring teams, and the girls team placed 28th.
Mendoza
won the high jump with a leap of 6-5 as he continued to look the part
of a state championship contender after a third-place finish in that
event in 2025. The 6-5 mark was in fact Mendoza's lowest winning jump of
the year; he's won each time he's competed this year, with a season
high of 6-8.
Graysen Olstrom added a third-place finish for
the Vikings in pole vault, with a mark of 12-6. Javi LeBlanc was the
Vikings' third top-6 finisher, earning sixth place in the 800-meter run
with a personal best time of 1:58.8 - just over a second shy of earning
an early qualification to state. LeBlanc's was one of nine PRs set by
Viking boys in the meet.
Lexi Poulin scored the Viking girls' top finish in Grand Rapids, finishing seventh in the high jump with a leap of 4-10.
