Bucks place fifth at Mentor Relays behind strong relay showings and school-record run
Buckeye’s boys track and field team scored 47 points to finish fifth Friday night at the 97th Annual Mentor Relays, turning in a strong overall showing against a 24-team field in Mentor.
The Bucks were led by a mix of field-event depth and distance strength, with Caden Fike and Lucas Vasel placing second in the pole vault relay. Fike cleared 12 feet, 6 inches, while Vasel added a 10-6 effort to help Buckeye post one of its top finishes of the meet.
Another key result came in the discus relay, where Denis Shevchenko and Jake Bally-Freiberg finished third. Shevchenko recorded a throw of 138-4, and Bally-Freiberg followed with a mark of 132-4, giving the Bucks another podium finish in the field events.
Buckeye also produced two third-place relay finishes on the track. The 4x400 team of Dimitry Pshonyak, Nolan Rieth, Gavin Waibel and Brady Salazar clocked a 3:34.65, while the 4x800 team of Joe Stahl, Waibel, Rieth and Salazar finished in 8:20.90. Those performances provided an important share of the team’s point total and helped secure the fifth-place finish.
Pshonyak added one of the night’s biggest individual highlights in the Nike Elite 5000-meter race. He set a school record with a time of 15:58.96 and finished eighth overall to reach the podium, capping one of the standout performances of the meet for Buckeye.
For the Bucks, the night reflected both top-end performances and balance across events. With second- and third-place relay finishes, a school record in one of the meet’s premier distance races and a fifth-place team result, Buckeye delivered a competitive showing against one of the area’s deeper invitational fields.
