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A pair of high school athletes from IMG Academy represented their home island countries at the CARIFTA Games on Saturday in the Bahamas and both celebrated gold medal victories.
Davonte Howell, a senior sprinter for the Ascenders of IMG Academy, blasted a 100 meter clocking of 10.30 (+1.9) to win the U20 division. Howell was representing and won gold for the Cayman Islands, where he and his family are from.
Howell was just coming off clocking a new personal best of 10.29 just last weekend to finish as a runner-up at the Texas Relays with his IMG Academy squad. On Saturday, he had the sixth-fastest qualifying time in the morning prelims at 10.68, but he really stepped up when the finals came around in the evening.
Meanwhile, there was Layla Haynes. After earning a bronze and silver medal last year at the CARIFTA Games in Kingston, Jamaica, the IMG Academy senior was not going to be denied in one of her last opportunities at the famed meet before she heads off to the University of Florida in the fall.
Representing her home island nation of Barbados, Haynes rallied from being in fourth-place with 400m to go to close in a remarkable 60 seconds to pass a pair of 19-year-olds from Jamaica -- Kishay Rowe (2nd, 4:53.79) and Jody Ann Mitchell (3rd, 4:55.9) -- as she landed a time of 4:53.29 for the win in the strategic sit and kick affair.
Haynes primarily focuses on the 800m in high school meets stateside, but she certainly used her speed and sub 2:10 credentials to her advantage in the final lap. She will look to recover and come back in the 800m later this weekend with several of the same top seeds from the 1,500m, including Montverde Academy junior and U.S. Virgin Islands competitor Michelle Smith -- Smith owns a 2:07 PR compared to Haynes' 2:08.
The current U.S. No. 1 time of 2:06 could be challenged by those two.
In the U17 and U20 finals of the girls 400m, athletes with ties to the Montverde Academy both acquitted themselves well against the very best of the Caribbean.
University of Tennessee freshman Javonya Valcourt, a 2022 Montverde Academy graduate, was a runner-up in the U20 finals as the 19-year-old dropped a swift time of 52.12. It was a special race for Valcourt, a Bahamian, who was running in front of a home crowd.
Meanwhile, current Montverde Academy freshman Ellise Dickinson was able to qualify for the U17 girls 400m final and held her own, finishing fifth with a time of 56.85. Dickinson broke 55 seconds for the first time last week at the Florida Relays.
Brandon Pottinger, a graduate and state champion last spring for Palmer Trinity School in Miami, won a share of the U20 high jump title with a successful clearance of 2 meters, or 6 feet, 6.75 inches.
He was unable to break a tie with Chavez Penn, a fellow Jamaican competitor. Pottinger now competes for the University of Tennessee.
