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Swain County's Alden Thomas pole vaults at the SMC Indoor Championships
Larry Griffin
lgriffin@thesmokymountaintimes.com
At the SMC Indoor Championships, held Friday, Feb. 3, Swain County’s girls’ and boy’s track teams both took first place overall, even as a vicious cold front moved in that day.
The day saw athletes running, jumping, and pole-vaulting in frigid weather with the wind blowing hard. Many of the spectators were swathed in blankets and coats. The athletes powered through, some of them with no sleeves.
Swain Head Coach Keith Payne, as he watched a high jump event, said things were going well for the Maroon Devils.
“It’s really good so far,” he said. “For this temperature, with the wind, we’re doing well.”
The Maroon Devils took home several high positions. In the boys 500-meter dash finals, Swain County junior Kane Jones won first with a time of 1:13, while fellow junior Connor Brown won the 1,600-meter run finals with a time of 4:45.
Senior Austin Jenkins took second place in the boys 55-meter dash finals with 7.60 seconds.
In the boys’ triple jump finals, Swain County took all of the top three spots. Senior Matthew Gray was first with 39 feet, 11 inches, while sophomore Kelan McCullough and senior Austin Jenkins were second and third, with results of 38 feet, six inches and 37 feet respectively.
For the girls’ teams, Swain County 11th grader Melani Linton took first place in both the 55-meter dash and 300-meter dash finals, with times of 8.59 and 46.24 seconds respectively. Senior Amaya Hicks took first in the 500-meter dash finals with a time of 1:28.
In many of the girls’ events, Swain County literally didn’t have any competition, the other schools competing just lacked teams of the same size.
Locally, Payne explained, many of the schools in our conference don’t have enough female athletes competing in the sport.
“I hope our member schools are able to get a better turnout next year because competition makes us all better,” he said.
Of the boys, Payne said he is “very proud” of Swain’s team - though he anticipated their rivals at Cherokee would fight vigorously.
Observing some of her classmates’ work on the high jump, sophomore Gracie Sutton said the team was “coming to win.”
It was another SMC title for the girls as well as a title for the boys’ team. Both Swain teams will head to state competitions on Saturday to be held at the JDL Fast Track in Winston-Salem.