COLUMBIA – The Fort Mill track team sprinted their way into history.
The Fort Mill girls’ track team repeated as 5A Division II state champions and the boys’ team won their first state track title during the state meet at Richland Northeast High School on Saturday, May 16.
Fort Mill scored 73.20 points as West Florence finished second with 65 points.
“The girls crushed it,” said Fort Mill head track coach Lee Whitaker, who won his eighth and ninth state team championships as a coach.
In sweeping the track state titles, it was Whitaker’s fourth state title this academic year leading Fort Mill to sweep the cross-country state meet as well back in the fall. Whitaker has coached a total of six state team championships in cross country and now has three in track.
“It gets more nerve wracking,” he said. “When you stack up a few, it becomes the expectation.”
The Fort Mill boys’ track team finished with 95 points with Westwood coming in second with 94 points. The boys meet came down to the pole vault event with two Fort Mill jumpers, Jack Allen and Padyn Gossett-McDowell, finishing tied for fifth clearing 11 feet, 11.75 inches giving the Jackets the state title by one point.
“I couldn’t have asked anymore from the boys,” Whitaker said. “They fought all day long.”
The two state titles make a total of 45 team state championships for the Fort Mill High athletic department.
Nation Ford started strong in the first event of the meet with a second-place finish in the girls 4×100. They also finished second in the 4×400.
Fort Mill kept it going with a sweep in the 4×800. The girls’ team won in 9:28 which featured Lauren Allen, Mia Zook, Kaylee Rovenstine, and Marlee Cook. In the boys’ race, Fort Mill won in 7:53 and was made up of Finn Leckrone, Quinlan O’Toole, Wyatt Gremillion, and Connor Demmerle.
Fort Mill’s Mia Williams won the 100-meters in 11.75 for the first individual champion for the Jackets in the meet. That was short lived as the Jackets’ Demmerle came right back to win the 1600-meters in 4:17.
“It was hard, but having a little break (from the 4×800) helped,” Demmerle said. “It was also the least nervous I had been at state.”
Williams came back to win the triple jump with a total of 38 feet, 8.5 inches. She said bouncing back and forth between events wasn’t hard if she has time to prepare. She said she has always wanted to win a state title.
“That has been my goal since my freshman year,” she said.
The Jackets continued to surge ahead as Gremillion won the 800-meters in 1:53.
“I wanted to get out fast,” he said. “That first lap really helped.”
It was a local sweep with Catawba Ridge’s Isabella Cardozo winning the 800-meters in 2:15. The senior Cardozo went out with a bang. Her win was the first track state title for a female in school history.
“I wanted this so much,” she said. “I put everything I had into it.”
The Nation Ford girls finished 13th with 27.5 points and the Catawba Ridge girls were 17th with 21 points. The Catawba Ridge boys finished 15th with 21 points and Nation Ford was 17th with 18 points. The highest individual finish for Nation Ford was a third-place finish by Logan Thames in the 400-meters.
Mac Banks: mac@fortmillprepsports.com, @fortprep
