Calhoun stays hot at County Line meet
The Calhoun High School track and field team won its third consecutive meet last Thursday, taking first place at the County Line Championship meet at Ratner Stadium.
The competition is basically the three high schools in Gordon County against the three high schools from Whitfield County and in the boys category, the Yellow Jackets were a big winner.
Driven by 10 first places with three different boys winning two events each, the Swarm finished nearly 100 points ahead of second place Dalton.
Head coach Brant Murry’s team had 220.5 points and Dalton was second with 125, just above Sonoraville, which was third with 118.
In all, the Jackets were first in five of the six field events, both hurdles races, and two of the three relays in another strong performance as they continue to get better with the Region 7-5A meet just a few weeks away.
Senior Jaylan Harris, junior Dylan Faulkner, and sophomore Jadon Thomason were the Calhoun athletes who won two events each with the 10 first places alone bringing the team exactly 100 points.
Showing his outstanding athleticism, Harris was first in the 100-meter run (10.72) and the long jump (21-04.5).
Calhoun had an awesome showing in the 100, going 1-2-4 in the race. After Harris, senior Cole Speer was second (11.08) and sophomore Caden Williams was fourth (11.31).
Harris won the long jump (2104.5) by more than two feet and an event in which the first nine places were all Gordon County students. Senior Christopher Lewis was fifth (19-02) and classmate Gage Leonard was sixth (18-08), giving Calhoun three of the top six places.
Faulkner, like Harris, continued his outstanding spring by winning the pole vault (14-0) and the shot put (48-2), which is a pair of events that most athletes don’t usually do at the same time.
His win in the pole vault gave Calhoun three of the top four places in that event with Camden Charles coming in third (11-0) and Dustin Kerns fourth (10-0).
And while they didn’t win the high jump, Faulkner and Harris helped Calhoun place second through fifth individually.
Faulkner was second with a height of 6-04 and Harris was third at 6-02. Braxton Medders was fourth at 5-10 and senior Blaze Hammett was fifth for the Jackets.
For the second straight meet, Thomason won both of the hurdles
races, coming in first in the 110-meter (14.69) and the 300-meters (40.66).
Actually, Calhoun dominated the shorter hurdles race going 1-2-3 individually with, after Thomason, senior Quin Smith second (14.85) and Kerns third (15.19) as that trio pushed each other the entire race.
And for the third-straight meet, Quin Smith was the triple jump winner, placing first (42-08) in an event that the Yellow Jackets had two of the top three finishes with Medders third (40-5.25).
Senior Lex Walraven had Calhoun’s other first place, winning the discus with two of his team mates also placing in the top five.
Walraven won it (136-02) with Faulkner third (127-04) and Derek Greene fifth (116-04) for the Jackets.
In the relays, the team in goldand-white won two of them and was second in the other.
The Jackets were first in the 4-x-100 (43.70) and the 4-x-400 (3:35.42). They were also second in the 4-x-200 (1:35.52).
They won the 1,600- by nearly seven seconds over second place Sonoraville and the 400- by a full second, again over the Phoenix.
In the 800-meter relay, the Yellow Jacket A team was the runnerup, two seconds off the winning pace set by Gordon Central.
Bryant Arnold had an individual third in the 400-meter (54.58) for Calhoun as three of his teammates were also in the field.
Calhoun also went 4-5-6 in the 200-meter race with all three of their runners less than a halfsecond apart. Luke Hawkins was fourth (23.24) while Williams was fifth (23.70) and Arnold was sixth (23.78).