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Swain County High School Maroon Devils and Lady Devils both took first place at the regional competition held Friday, May 12. Several individual athletes had big wins for the day as well. -
Maroon Devil Nse Uffort in shot put -
Lady Devil Arizona Blankenship earned a new regional record for the 3200 meter and a new school and regional record for the 1600 meter. -
Runners make their way around the track at the regional competition held Friday. From the front (right) are: Jaylan McCoy-Bark (Cherokee), Kane Jones (Swain), Connor Brown (Swain), and Abhi Patel (Swain). The Maroon Devils came away as regional champions.
Larry Griffin
lgriffin@thesmokymountaintimes.com
Swain High’s track teams continued a dominant streak in Valdese on Friday, May 12, keeping ahead of Mountain Island Charter’s teams, with both the Swain boys’ and girls’ teams winning with 132 points and 153 points respectively.
The Mountain Island Charter teams got 110 and 104 points respectively.
Coach Ian Roper was happy with the results, saying the athletes “continue to amaze us all.”
“I couldn’t have been happier with our performances overall,” he said. “Our kids are peaking at the right time and singularly focused on winning a state title next week. We have put ourselves in the position of just having to go out and hit our marks. The rest will take care of itself.”
The Swain teams took home some big wins – Matthew Gray got a new regional record in pole vault and took home a championship title for triple jump, while Josiah Glaspie got the regional champion title for 400 dash.
Gracie Sutton got a new school record in the high jump, while Amelia Rogers got a regional record for pole vault and Faith Woodard took home a champion title in shot put.
The 4x800 team of Connor Brown, Connor Lambert, Kane Jones and Abhi Patel got the regional champion record, as did the girls’ team for the same, consisting of Arizona Blankenship, Amaya Hicks, Annie Lewis and Gracie Monteith, which was a new school record, too.
In addition, Blankenship got a new regional record for the 3200 meter and a new school and regional record for the 1600 meter.
The track team has come off some other big wins lately, including easily taking first place at the SMC Track & Field Championships on May 3.
Their next meet will be May 19 in Greensboro, NC, for the NCHSAA 1A/3A state championship.