Blake Thiry: Once, twice, three times state champion
PdC senior Blake Thiry prepares to land during his final Triple Jump attempt. Thiry won the event with a jump of 47’0. (Derick Kelly/Courier Press)
Thiry finishes his first place run in the D2 110 Meters Hurdles race. Thiry finished in 14.16 seconds, breaking his own school record. (A.J. Gates/Grant County Herald Independent)
Thiry soars in the air to claim the D2 Long Jump title with a jump of 23-6.75. (Derick Kelly/Courier Press)
Hayward’s Lucas Hansen and Thiry were nearly tied heading into the final hurdle of the D2 300 Meters Hurdles race. Hansen finished first in a new D2 record time of 37.79 while Thiry was second with a new PdC record at 38.00. (Derick Kelly/Courier Press)
Prairie's Tannah Radloff competed in her fourth state meet on Friday morning. She participated in the 2025 D2 Girls Triple Jump, an event she qualified for at last week's sectional meet at McFarland High Schoo. (Submitted Photo/Robert Callahan)
By Derick Kelly
The 2025 WIAA State Track Meet will go down as one of the greatest weekends in the history of Prairie du Chien High School Athletics.
To an athlete like Blake Thiry, it will go down as the conclusion of a process that began years prior as he gets ready for his next journey as a member of the Indiana Hoosiers football team.
Thiry entered the weekend as a strong favorite to claim multiple gold medals as he looked to earn his first career state championship in track after numerous close calls over the previous three seasons.
First up for Thiry was a Long Jump last Friday. Also competing in the event was fellow senior and defending D2 state champion Amare Jackson of Milwaukee Academy of Science. Jackson was looking to defend his crown that he had won the year before with a jump of 23-03.50.
Thiry found himself in second place (behind Johnson) going into the finals when he took the lead with a new school record jump of 23-3.25. Jackson was not able to pass Thiry with his first finals jump and then scratched on his second attempt when he appeared to pull a hamstring in the run up to the jump attempt.
On his final attempt of the finals, Thiry busted out a spectacular jump of 23-6.75, extending his lead and yet again breaking his own school record. Jackson admirably took his final attempt despite an obviously still sore hamstring but scratched in the final jump attempt of the finals, making Thiry the brand new D2 State Champion in the Long Jump. The championship was the Hawks first by a PdC Boy since 1979, when Bruce Hemmer won the Class B Discus.
Thiry was not the only PdC athlete to compete at the state meet. Fellow senior Tannah Radloff competed at her fourth state meet in the D2 Girls Triple Jump. Radloff sat in seventh place after her first jump of 33-4.25. She scratched on her second attempt before improving on her first jump with a distance of 33-9.25, but the jump was not enough to qualify Radloff for the finals, so she ended her career with a 16th place finish in D2 at the 2025 WIAA State Track Meet.
Thiry rounded out his Friday schedule with the preliminary races in the 110 and 300 Hurdles Races. He claimed first place in both of his two heats, winning the 110 meters race in a time of 14.47 and the 300 meters race in a time of 38.48.
The final day of Thiry’s prep career began Saturday morning with the Triple Jump. Thiry opened up the event with a jump of 42-8.25, which put him in first place. Each of his next five jumps increased his lead which kept him in first place but it was his sixth and final jump that cemented his third state championship of the weekend when he broke his school record with a jump of 47’0.
During his triple jump attempts, Thiry ran in the finals race for the 110 Meter Hurdles and earned his second state championship by winning the race in a time of 14.16, once again breaking his own school record.
With three championships won in three events entering his fourth and final event, Thiry looked to become just the third boy in the 129 year history of the WIAA State Track Meet to win four or more events at one state meet. The two boys to accomplish this feat were Alvin Kraenzlein of Milwaukee East in 1895 (100 Yard Dash, 120 Yard and 220 Yard Hurdles, Broad Jump and Shot Put) and Stratford’s Andrew Rock (D3 110 Meter Hurdles, 200 Meter Dash, 300 Meter Hurdles and Long Jump).
For the sixth time this weekend, Thiry broke his own school record in an event as he finished the race in a time of 38.00. However, this time was .21 seconds behind champion Hayward junior Lucas Hansen, whose time of 37.79 happened to break the D2 state record of 37.82 (set in 2018 by Lodi’s Robby Hatch).
So while Thiry came up just short of being the third boy in history to win four events at the same WIAA State Track meet, he managed to become the first PdC High School athlete to ever win an individual state championship in two different sports and is also the first PdC boy to win multiple individual state championships in track. He also managed to score 38 points by himself which was enough to put the Hawks in third place in D2, the best team finish at the state meet for PdC Boys Track since a third place finish in 1937. The 38 points scored also broke the program record of 21 points set in 1989.
The Hawks were in position to claim a runner-up finish in D2 until Winneconne won the 4x400 Relay team in the final D2 event of the meet to score 10 points and jump past Prairie into second place with 42.5 points, 1.5 points behind first place Green Bay Notre Dame.
