The Temple boys qualified athletes for the state meet in both of their field events Friday, getting runner-up finishes from senior Tevin Reese in the triple jump and junior Chris Randle in the high jump at Hart-Patterson Track and Field Complex.

It marked the first time since 1994 that Temple qualified multiple boys athletes - other than relay teams - for the University Interscholastic League state meet. And the Wildcats have five chances today to add to their contingent for the championship event, June 5-6 at Mike A. Myers Stadium in Austin.

“That was a pretty good start,” said Wildcats coach Wayne Ransleben, whose squad leads the team standings heading into the final day. “Now we just want to keep it going.”

Reese was runner-up in the triple jump for the second straight year, again finishing second to defending state champion Marquis Goodwin of Garland Rowlett.

Reese leaped 48 feet, 1½ inches on his first attempt in the preliminaries and held the lead until Goodwin went 50-3 on his second try. The defending champ packed away his shoes for the afternoon, and Reese never bettered his opening mark. Temple’s Daniel Carr was fourth.

On his final preliminary attempt, Reese grimaced upon landing and struggled to get out of the pit. With his left ankle heavily taped, he took two jumps in the finals before settling for second.

“I knew my coaches were going to have me take at least one jump in the finals,” said Reese, who today has the long jump and the finals of the 110-meter hurdles, 300 hurdles and mile relay. “I didn’t feel so good after that first one of the finals, so I took another one and felt a lot better.”

Added Ransleben: “Tevin’s first jump in the finals is usually his best one. But then that one was just kind of average, so he took one more and said he was OK. But it was very tempting to have him not jump any in the finals.”

While Reese - a state qualifier in three events last year with his eye on five events this season - was a known commodity, Randle was simply part of a large pack of jumpers in the 6-6 to 6-8 range.

Randle was perfect through 6-6 and one of three competitors to get over 6-8 on the final attempt after Tomball’s Tyler Lee cleared it on his first try. And when only Lee got over the bar at 6-10, Randle’s state ticket was punched by virtue of his early clean slate.

“I had a good feeling coming in that I could make it,” said Randle, who cleared 6-8 for only the second time in his career. “We have been practicing with the bar set really high, so that made 6-8 look low.”

Getting over 6-8 kept him alive, but it was getting through the previous four heights without a miss that clinched his spot in Austin.

“We had talked about how this event last year had come down to misses,” Ransleben said. “So we knew he needed to have a clean day at the lower heights.”

Belton’s Zac Sakaria was seventh in the shot put.

Three field events and the 3,200-meter run were the only events completed Friday, with three more field events and the running finals slated for today.

On the girls side Friday, Temple’s Kacie Easley set a personal record of 40-½ and finished sixth in a stacked shot put competition in which the defending state champion finished third.

“It feels good to better my personal best,” said Easley, a softball signee with Texarkana College. “I would have loved to go to state, but I’m happy with how I threw today.”

Temple’s Sausha Armstrong was eighth in the triple jump, which was won by Harker Heights’ Melissa Mays - the area’s only female athlete to earn a state berth on the meet’s first day.

When the running preliminaries started in the late afternoon, Reese - who this fall will play football only a block from Hart-Patterson at Baylor’s Floyd Casey Stadium - stayed on track in his attempt to at least match his three-event state trip last year.

He qualified third into the finals of the 110 hurdles, clocking a time of 14.05 seconds to the 13.71 of Dallas Skyline’s Timothy Young and the 14.03 of Cedar Park Vista Ridge’s Andre Sanders - a former Wildcat who moved prior to last season.

In the 300s, Reese was the seventh qualifier with a 38.97 - Ellison’s Steven White (37.33) was the top qualifier - before finishing the night as the anchor on the Wildcats’ 1,600 relay that was first in its heat and one of only four teams to come in under 3:21.

In the girls 300s, Belton’s Myca San Miguel qualified seventh in 45.44, a half-second off her winning time at the District 12-5A meet.

“It was different, coming around the corner and still having girls in front of me,” San Miguel, a North Carolina signee, said of her second-place performance in Heat 2. “It was different feeling, but it did kind of push me.”

Ellison provided most of the other prelim highlights. The Eagles were top qualifiers in the 400 and 800 relays, and Ellison’s Prezel Hardy and Michael Bryan qualified 1-3, respectively, in the 100.

The Lady Eagles’ Kehri Jones was second fastest in the girls 100 preliminaries, and Harker Heights’ Aliese Hyde was the top qualifier in the girls 800.

edrennan@temple-telegram.com