Lauderdale Lakes Middle School swept both the team titles at the FLYRA MS State Championship with valuable points from Daishon Spann, but it was MGX star Tyrese Cooper that stole the show.
Just like Superman's alter-ego, the mild-mannered reporter, Clark Kent, Lake Brantley's Sinclaire Johnson returned to her humble job, selling shoes and socks and running gear at Fleet Feet in Altamonte Springs on Sunday, just hours after setting down some of the fastest high school times in the nation on Saturday at UNF.
Saturday left no doubt statewide that 4A is one of the toughest classifications in the entire state. Andy Warrener has a complete recap of all the action!
The ladies of Miami Northwestern flat out destroyed the competition tallying 155 points, more than five times runner-up Lakewood Ranch. The win marked the seventh straight title for the Bulls.
Ransom Everglades senior Nati Sheppard won her first 2A pole vault state championship by smashing the state meet record of 12-10, clearing 13-0 and then 13-3.
Hallandale High School did something the school has never done and that is to sweep a state meet. The Chargers cleaned house at the 2A state finals. Andy Warrener has a recap of all the action!
Admiral Farragut senior Brittany McGee scored 40 points for the Blue Jackets who were the 1A girls state champions. Andy Warrener has a recap of all the action!
It began at the 2014 Hillsborough County track championships in Tampa. Tampa Bay Tech's Malik Wright and East Bay's James Hambrick hatched a rivalry that could very well play out as the first and second place 200m medalists at the Class 4A state meet in Jacksonville on Saturday.
The Melbourne Holy Trinity team has had a stranglehold on Class A Region 3 for the last few years. The Holy Trinity boys have won the last three, the girls, the last two. Thursday ushered in a regime change in Region 3 as the BlueJackets won both boys and girls titles.
Who punched their ticket to the state finals from 4A Region 2 in Tampa? Andy Warrener has the complete recap of all the action!
Seffner Christian Academy senior Jamari Johnson is one of the top throwers in 1A and his eyes set on a state title.
If it weren't for the sizzling times that Wharton sprinter V'Onte Williams has been setting down this season, he might have flown completely under the radar. V'Onte Williams, pronounced (Vee-Onte), is one of the most quiet athletes you'll see on the track in Hillsborough County.
Hillsborough High School has a 1-2 knockout punch in senior Jada Roberson and sophomore Daneesha Davidson. The duo has the scoring potential to keep the Terriers at the top of the team standings in most meets.
Whether it was running laps around her elementary school track to win prizes, placing in Hillsborough County track championships at Mann Middle School in Brandon, or logging as many as 6,000 meters at any given high school meet, Lithia Riverview's Bailey Hertenstein, in her first year of high school track has cemented a reputation of being a tireless and potent distance runner.
For the Hillsborough boys, it came down to the last event and the last two laps to eke out a nail-shredding victory over a hard-charging Steinbrenner team. The Terrier boys, typically dominant through the field events, took the early lead.
Next year, Hillsborough High School triple jumper Dwayne Lawson will be wholly focused on the game of football.
If you want to be a state champion pole vaulter, you'll need a few things; nerves of steel, great upper body strength and a comically long mailbox. Pole vaulters are a unique breed. Vault being such a technical sport, it's rare that you see athletes with much crossover into other events.
If you're a Pinellas County track fan, you've no doubt seen Admiral Farragut senior Brittany McGee and Dunedin junior Olivia Welsh in action. However, you may not have seen them compete against each other.
The Miami Northwestern boys team graduated enough athletes to pull them back down to earth in 2015. The girls team, however, is a dynasty in full bloom as their split squad, what coach Jimmy Harrell called his "gold" squad had plenty enough to win the 72-team USF-Steinbrenner Invitational on Saturday.
The Countryside Cougar boys and the East Lake Eagle girls have sent opening salvos to kick off the 2015 track season that have put Pinellas County and the entire Tampa Bay area on red alert. Both squads are 3-for-3 in their opening meets, including two large invitationals, the first at East Lake and Friday's at Mitchell.
We'll get to the team scores later. The biggest highlights of the 2015 Charles Johnson came from two individuals that have raised the state standard. Hillsborough's Dwyane Lawson and Gaither's Samson Moore have reset the leader boards in their signature events.
In possibly the tightest races of the day, Pine Crest's Tsion Yared won the girls race in 18:18.8 and Joel Lacy of Calvary Christian won the boys race in 15:48.3.
The Class A girls set off third, having to endure the tip of the iceberg that was Saturday morning. Temperatures still hovered in the low 40s. Through the starting chute Evangelical Christian's Sarah Candiano and Calvary Christian's Hannah Brookover paced just in front of an eight-girl group, getting out fast under six minutes for the first split.
The battle of the big schools was a close contest for both boys and girls races. The girls race was the very first race of the chilly morning that saw frost on the ground for six of the eight races run on Saturday.
Can we take a moment and acknowledge just how awesome Leon's Sukhi Khosla is? The Leon senior already set down a sub-15 minute and national top 10 time last week at regionals.
The 5th Annual Anclote Sharks Invitational Saturday was overshadowed by the FSU Pre-State meet in Tallahassee, but no one told that to the East Lake girls who took the top three spots. However, with only four runners competing, their team score couldn't stick. Instead it would be West Orange taking the girls team title with 28 points to runner-up Palm Harbor with 64. West Orange had two top 10 finishers with Megan Hannah taking fifth in 21:23.1 and Alexandra Miller taking seventh in 21:24.2.
With a pair of back-to-back, 30+ team invitationals in the Tampa area, Saturday's Land O'Lakes Gator Invite was almost a mirror image of the Mitchell Invitational the week before. Ocala Vanguard carried both team titles. Sickles' James Zentmeyer edged Vanguard's Joey Fitzpatrick for the boys title and Vanguard's Audrey Carpenter beat Mitchell's Emily Kerns for the girls title in a near carbon copy from last week.
The 2014 Run with the Bulls Invitational at Wiregrass Ranch High School resumed after a one-year hiatus on Saturday. The faces of the 2012 meet were nowhere to be found Saturday as a new host of victors took the stage. In 2012, the Land O'Lakes Gators dominated the boys. In 2014, it was Class 4A state champion in the 1600m and 3200m Plant senior Jack Guyton that stole the show. Guyton was flanked by familiar foes in the early going. Jack Rogers of Robinson and Noah Perkins of Seffner Christian both gave chase to Guyton early on.
The stages keep getting bigger for childhood friends Trayvon Bromell and TJ Holmes. The pair have been racing each other since they were in grade school. They joined the same youth track club and grew up together. They both attended high school in south Saint Petersburg and they both landed on the prestigious Baylor track team for their first year of collegiate track. They are college roommates and will even be rooming together for the World Junior Championships in Eugene, Oregon this week.