ADM senior sprinter Kari Dufoe had a strong showing at the Drake Relays Friday afternoon, taking second in the 100m dash with a time of 12.25 seconds.

Tigers head coach Bart Mueller said he felt very good about the way Dufoe performed, especially when considering the senior is working her way back from leg injuries. Dufoe missed an entire week of competition two weeks go and was limited to only running in 100m races this past week.

“I think compared to past years at Drake, there’s quite a few girls with times under 12.5, and normally a first place time, the girl that won it tied the Drake Relays record,” Mueller said. “So, some years that would have won. I think we saw that Kari’s time would have won in the last three Drake relays, so it was definitely a strong field.

“Her getting second is a great blessing. Her running healthy and feeling good and running fast, we’re really happy about.”

Mueller also gave his thoughts on his 4×100 relay team of Maggi Bjustrom, Sami Schepers, Sydney Bertman and Dufoe, which finished 11th out of 80 teams with a time of 50.43 seconds in Friday’s preliminary round. That wasn’t quite good enough to qualify, as on the top eight teams advance to Saturday’s finals. But Mueller said the absence of Dufoe from that relay the past two weeks worsened ADM’s seeding and hurt the group’s timing and chemistry with handoffs.

Despite those issues, the Tigers finished just three-tenths of a second behind qualifying for the finals and were the second-fastest team in Class 3A, behind Raccoon River Conference rival Boone, which finished fifth. That has Mueller excited about the relays’ potential moving forward.

“We’re still kind of getting confident with our handoffs on that group,” Mueller said. “They can get a little more confidence – then you can run just run through the zones a little faster. It wasn’t a great day today, it was nice, but it wasn’t great, and I think they’ll have a chance to run faster yet. That’s looking good.”