Warriors win quad meet at Ratner Stadium

With five wins overall — and four of those in the relays — the Gordon Central High School track and field team defeated three Region 7-2A opponents last week in a quadrangular meet at Ratner Stadium.

The Warriors scored 110 points to finish over 40 points ahead of second place Model, which closed the meet with 66. Chattooga was third with 46 and Coosa was fourth with 33.

The Warriors had just one individual first place, but ran away with all four relays, literally, and had a good number of second and thirds to collect their victory.

In the relays, Gordon Central won the 4-x-100, 4-x200, and 4-x-400 with Model coming in second in each of them. The Warriors also took the 4-x-800 with Coosa the runner-up and Model finishing third.

The 4-x-100 relay was the race of the day with just two one-hundredths of a second separating GC and Model at the end. The Warriors won by a hair, finishing with a 46.66 time while the Blue Devils had a 46.68.

It was also close in the 4-x200 with four Gordon Central runners teaming up to run a time of 1:40.81 with Model second at 1:43.13.

But it wasn’t close at all in the 4-x-400 as the host school won with a resounding 3:51.08 while Model was over 40 seconds behind, running a 4:37.15 for the silver medal.

The Warriors did have to push to the end to win the long 3,200-meter run, though, taking it by 10 seconds over Coosa. The blue-and-silver finished with a 9:40.24 winning time and the Eagles had a 9:50.12.

Individually, sophomore Matthew Burdette had Gordon Central’s only win, taking first place in the discus (107-09) by nearly 12 feet over the second place finisher from Model (95-11). The Warriors actually had two of the first four finishers in the field with sophomore Chance Massingill coming in fourth (88-02).

What put the hosts over the top was all the secondplaces as they had nine of them and in a few of those races, two or three Gordon Central runners were together at the finish line.

The boys were second, third, and fourth in the 200-meter run with junior Jadon Harper second (25.88) while sophomore Brennon Chamlee came in third (25.97) and sophomore Jacob Lopez was fourth (26.21) in a field of a dozen runners that had no seniors.

They were also second and third in the 800-meter and 1,600-meter runs with sophomore Alex Lara the runner-up in both.

Lara was second in the half-mile with junior teammate Mario Martinez next in third place. Lara ran a 2:33.12 to finish less than three seconds off the winning 2:29.32. Martinez also ran well, closing with a 2:35.89.

Lara was also second in the mile (5:34.88) and fellow sophomore Owen Lowrance was right behind him in third (5:44.79) for the Warriors. GC actually had three of the top five runners to finish with Martinez coming in fifth.

Gordon Central’s other six individual second places were split down the middle with three in the field events and three coming in the running.

Junior Blake Broome was the runner-up in the 400-meter run (58.11) in a race that saw two of the first four finishes come from a Gordon Central racer. Junior Yostin Reyes was fourth in the competition and second for the Warriors (1:02.75).

Junior Leo Heath came in second in the 110-meter hurdles (20.02) in an event won by a Chattooga freshman (16.32). In all, the Warriors had three runners in the race and all finished in under 23 seconds.

Junior Gavin Holmes was the runner-up in the 3,200-meter or two-mile run, ending with a 16:52.05.

In the field events, junior Marquavious Yopp was just two inches away from winning the long jump. A junior from Model had the longest distance of 19 feet, one inch, but Yopp was right there, ending the day with a best of 18 feet, 11 inches. He was ten inches ahead of the third place length of 18 feet, one inch.

Junior Aiddyn Bennett placed second in the triple jump for the Warriors at 35 feet even. The top hop, skip, and jump was a 38-03 by a Chattooga sophomore.

Senior Cade Hendrix earned second in the shot put with a 39-09 and he was five feet ahead of the third place throw. A Model sophomore had the best distance, winning with a 45-06.

Gordon Central also had a good showing in the 100-meter dash, going 3-4-5 from its top three runners. Yopp was third in the race with an 11.68 and just a step ahead of Bennett, who had an 11.70. Sophomore Christopher Gonzales was third for the Warriors and fifth overall with a 12.32. The two runners ahead of Yopp both posted an 11.59 for a virtual tie.