By Brian Smith
Sports Correspondent
COLUMBUS — Day one sweltered.
With ten graduations being held at the Schottenstein Center making for tight parking, 90-degree heat blazing from a clear sky along with a boistrous crowd, the first day at the Ohio High School Athletic Association state track meet at Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium had all the atmosphere of a summer block party.

Several relay teams from Minster and two New Bremen individuals got into the celebrations on day one.
Scott Schnelle took the silver in the event he dominated all season. Schnelle set a personal record with a 6-foot, seven-inch jump in the high jump.
That second-place finish garnered eight points for the Cardinals.
In the relay race that ran its final on Friday, both the girls and boys teams cut substantial amounts off their regional times.
The Minster girls 4x800 relay team finished fourth in the race to begin the morning’s events. The team of Lei Bornhorst, Jessica Albers, Maria Dahlinghaus and Katie Dahlinghaus ran the race in 9:41.12.
“I just try to focus on people ahead of me and got after them,” Albers said.
The team switched up the order for state and cut 14 seconds off their time.
The Minster boys 4x800 meter relay team took seventh — good enough to reach the podium. The team of Joby Stechschulte, Matthew Brackman, Kregg Olding and David McGowan finished with an 8:08.49 time. That was almost a full seven seconds better than the time the Wildcat team posted at the Dayton Regional meet.
“I wanted to get my PR (personal record), help my team and do my best,” Olding said after the race.
“Our goal was top ten,” Stechschulte said. “The competition was a lot better than the rest of the season.”
The Minster boys 4x200 team will run in the finals on Saturday after turning in a 1:31.62 time. The team of Tyler Whitford, Sam Phlipot, Matthew Brackman and Albert Barga all sported mohawks for the run and finished seventh in the preliminaries.
New Bremen’s Bryce Brenneman took tenth in the boys long jump final (20 feet, one inch) and set himself up for a big day on Saturday by qualifying for the state finals in the 110 meter (14.78 seconds) and 300 meter (39.62 seconds) hurdles.
Bergman turned in the best times in the heats for both races.
New Bremen boys’ 4x400 relay team will race in the finals after a finish in 3:2836 time. Jeff Kremer, Zach Speckman, Kyle Knapke and Bergman make up that squad.
Jeff Kremer finished one spot out of the finals in the boys 400 meter dash with a 50.68-second time.
The Minster girls 4x200 relay team of Cecilia Slonkosky, Maria Dahlinghaus, Katie Dahlinghaus and Alyssa Kemper finished 14th in the heats.
Alyssa Kemper finished 12th in the girls 200 meter dash in the preliminaries with a 27.16-second time.
The Minster girls 4x400 relay team finished 14th in the prelims (same line-up as the 4x800 race) with a 4:11.92 time.
In team standings, the New Bremen boys are ninth with eight points and Minster is 35th with two points.
The New Bremen boys are seventh with eight points. Minster is 30th with two points.
The state meet starts back up at 9:30 a.m. Saturday.

Day 2 COLUMBUS — Bryce Bergman plopped himself atop the highest step of the podium and sat down with a contented but bemused look after a win in the 300 meter hurdle state championship.
If it looked like Bergman had been there before — it was because he had.
Less than an hour before.
Bergman won the 300 and 110 meter hurdle championships in Division III on Saturday, a pair of finishes that helped catapult the New Bremen track and field team to a third-place finish with 29 points at Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium on Saturday.
“I had a great start and I had great speed between the hurdles,” Bergman said.
Bergman won the 110 meter hurdles with a 14.78-second time and the 300 hurdles with a 38.49-second time.
It was the first time Bergman broke the 39-second range in his career at New Bremen.
Jessica Albers of Minster took eighth in the girls 1600 meter run with a 5:14.83 time.
Averie Bornhorst of Minster finished fourteenth in the girls 3200 meter race with a time of 12:13.96.
The New Bremen boys 4x400 relay team of Jeff Kremer, Zach Speckman, Kyle Knapke and Bergman took eighth with a time of 3:27.74.
The Bluffton boys won the Division III state title with 54 points. Gilmour Academy came in second with 40 points, followed by the Cardinals.
The Minster boys tied for 30th with six points.
Bellaire St. John Central won the girls meet with 69 points. Gilmour Academy was second with 61 points. Versailles finished sixth with 26.33 points.
Minster finished 29th with six points.
Full results are on the bottom of Page B2.
NOTES: The event on Saturday was much cooler than Friday’s, which had temperatures reaching the low 90s. Napoleon’s Ryan Fleck set a state record in Div. III with a high jump of over seven feet.