Bolles head coach Dan Dearing knew Collier was capable of a fast time this week after he clocked her at 2:03 on the anchor leg for the team's 4x800m relay.
"We had seen it on the relay a few weeks ago when she had people to chase," he said. The state meet can get complicated when your team has a chance to be competitive as well as the individuals, so we wanted to get her that good 800 time in an individual race now to help her get into some good meets for the summer."
The junior, who already has five outdoor individual state titles to her credit, and was 5th at the Adidas Dream Mile in 2016, is entered in the professional women's 800m at the Nike Festival of Miles in St. Louis on June 1st. Dearing notes that her fitness level is good and getting better each week.
(Photo by Cedric Gillette)
"Her season started a bit later than normal and will go pretty deep into the summer so we taking all of that into account with her training," he explained. I can say that her strength and leg speed is better than it has ever been which was proven last night when she came back 25 minutes after the two mile and split a 54.8 on the 4x4."
Collier won the 800 and 1,600 easily at regionals. She holds the state meet record in the 800 and has a chance to break the state of Florida All-Time record in that race as well as she's only 0.15 seconds off of that mark. As for what she'll run at next week's state meet, she'll look for the distance sweep, but the fourth event is still up in the air.
"We have not decided which relay she will be on and we may not decide until that Saturday morning," Dearing added. Our priorities are doing what is best for the team chances to win. If you add up our four girls 800m times from last night, that team would break nine minutes and the all time state record is 9:03.42 (Orange Park in 1983), the state meet record is slower than that (9:05.90 by Miami Northwestern in 2007)."
No matter what events the speedster does she will go down as one of the fastest females in Florida history. Her credentials from the 400 to 5k are unheard of, the titles to prove it, and two more outdoor state championships to set the bar.
