It was a big day for Oregon girl athletics on Saturday with a regional softball title and a fourth-place finish in the IHSA track & field meet. Not only that, but several of the key contributors in both sports are freshmen and sophomores.

The softball Hawks have an uphill climb in the sectional, as they face a 30-5 North Boone team who beat them twice by a combined 18-1 score. No matter the outcome of the contest, Oregon (19-12) under first-year coach Abby Baker is built for the future.

As a No. 1 sub-sectional seed, Stillman (28-5) Valley has a much easier path to the final with 10-20 Aurora Central Catholic on the docket. The No. 7 seed upset both Woodstock Marian and sectional host Marengo to advance.

When covering the girls state meet, I discovered Fulton had three of its state-placing relay runners play in the regional final softball game the day before. The Steamers upset No. 1 seed Morrison for the title.

In chatting with them, they talked about how much fun it is to share double sports. Another well-known track/softball player is Lily Bosnich of Peru-St. Bede, who drew national attention from a recent photo of her running the hurdles in her softball uniform.

She had just completed a game and dashed over to the track with no time to change. At the state meet, she placed in the 300 hurdles for the fourth straight year.

After runner-up finishes in 2024 and 2025, she had high hopes for a title, but Jillian Hammer of Oregon squelched that dream with a time of 42.84, a full second ahead of Bosnich.

“I didn’t know that much about her,” Bosnich told me. “But, you can tell this is what she does.”

Bosnich did beat Hammer in the 100 hurdles to claim second place, but never was able to get that elusive state title in either hurdle event during her HS career. Sophomore McKenna Van Tilburg of Wilmington won the 110 hurdles 14.60 to the 14.63 for Bosnich and 14.95 for Hammer.

Coming in as the top seeded prelim time in the 100 hurdles, the race was lost for Hammer coming out of the blocks. Both Van Tilburg and Bosnich got a big jump on her and Hammer was unable to recover in such a short distance.

It should be noted that the 300 is more her race than the 100s. She demonstrated that exceptional top-end speed in each of her relay legs. In college, she has the potential to be a standout 400-meter hurdler.

Coach Nick Schneiderman was happy to finally send a relay to the finals for the first time in his tenure at Oregon. It was a double win for him, as he also got to see his daughter place in three events for Forreston.

What I like about that story is that there was never any intent by dad to get daughter to come to Oregon for her track prowess. In this day and age of transfers, this wasn’t a case of win at all costs and quite possibly the Hawks could have won the state title with her.

Here’s another 300 hurdler story from North Carolina. Nyan Brown of Mallard Creek ran a blistering fast time of 35.96 to win the state title.

Later, he came back to run anchor on a winning 4x400 relay. With that kind of speed in the 300 hurdles, of course it made sense for him to bring home the bacon.

Upon finishing, he joyously held up his hand with outstretched fingers to signify his school’s fifth consecutive state title. Meet officials ruled the celebratory gesture to be taunting and disqualified the relay, which ended up costing Mallard Creek the team title.

Something similar happened at the Rochelle 2A sectional. A Sterling 800-relay anchor relay threw the baton to the ground in anger after finishing, because he had spiked himself.

It looked harmless to me, but like the NC incident, his state-qualifying relay was disqualified for what is termed unsportsmanlike conduct.

As someone who has been closely associated with track & field for several decades, I wonder if we’ve become too legalistic.

In all that time, track officials occasionally have been notorious for going overboard on rule enforcement. I even experienced that myself last year at the boys state meet.

I volunteer to help work the pole vault there and one of our underclassmen from Oregon was competing. Since it was his first time downstate and he was struggling, I briefly took him aside for encouragement.

To my surprise, the head long jump official, whose runway is next to the pole vault, reprimanded me for that simple action.

He said he received complaints about me communicating with my athlete, while I worked the event. What about some grace in the particular situation instead.

This kid was one of the lowest seeds and had no chance of making it out of the prelims. Our communication was not affecting the competition. My protective nature of him was more important to me than the autocratic ruling body that is track & field.

When I officiate the area 1A and 2A pole vault sectionals, I bend the rules all the time for the benefit of the athlete and his school, provided it doesn’t affect safety, state qualification or impact scoring.

No one has ever complained about it and coaches and athletes have been grateful for the latitudes given. Shouldn’t a track & field meet be one big party with friends rather than an arena for finding fault with everything?

Andy Colbert is a longtime Ogle County resident with years of experience covering sports and more for multiple area publications.