Phoenix close season at 3A state event
The Sonoraville High School track teams had some excellent individual efforts last week at the GHSA 3A state meet at Grisham Stadium in Carrollton.
The three-day competition was the Phoenix’s final team competition in the 3A division as they are going up to the 4A classification next year.
And the Phoenix went out on a good note, securing a couple of topfive finishes and a number of top-10 showings.
Junior Ethan Hibberts had the Big Red’s highest individual finish, placing fourth in the state at 6-foot2. He led a parade of jumpers who reached the same height, but Hibberts did it in his first hump to earn the higher finish.
A 6-foot-6 jump won the state championship and two boys went 6-foot4 to finish ahead of Hibberts in second and third place. Then Hibberts went 6-4 with everyone else who got to that distance needing two or three attempts to get there.
Junior pole vaulter Jesse Vess came in fifth, going over the bar at 13 feet even. A 15-06 gave a vaulter from North Hall the gold medal and 15 feet even was second in the field. A pair of 13-6’s were third and fourth with Vess in the next place.
Vess had three attempts at 13-0 and hit it on his second, but failed to go any higher.
Sophomore Brynley Walraven came in eighth in the girls’ 400-meter dash, running a 1:01.05. The quarter-mile was a fast one with the winner earning a 57.26. The first four finishers all went below one minute.
The Sonoraville boys had two top 10 places in the discus with Cayden Guy ninth in the state and Julian Aguilar 10th.
Guy had a 142-09 and was ahead of Aguilar, whose best throw was a 142-05 as they were close to each other at the end.
Guy’s best throw of the day came on his second attempt. Of his six overall throws, he came close to topping that on his fifth one when he let
one rip that went 143 feet, eightinches.
For Aguilar, he had three throws and his 142-05 came on the second one. He had a 137-10 on his first toss and a 129-08 on his third.
And both just missed possibly moving up in the standings with a 142-10 the eighth place distance.
A 163-09 took first place and the second best throw was a 162-08 as those were the only heaves beyond 160 feet.
Senior Taylor Steele had a top-10 finish in one event and just missed that plateau in another, coming in ninth in the shot put and 11th in the state in the discus.
In the shot put, Steele’s best effort was 35 feet even. She uncorked the metal ball that distance on her first throw of the meet. After that, she had a trio of throws between 33-03 and 33-08.5.
A 38-11 distance won it all and there was thee throws beyond 38 feet. There were three throws beyond 37 feet as Steele was not far from finishing even higher.
In the discus, Steele was 11th in a very strong field of contenders with a best of 97-05. There was really only one favorite in the field and it came from Liberty County, where the girl let one go 151 feet, 10 inches.
Second place was a 13004 distance and 130 feet exactly took the bronze medal. The top nine girls in the competition all went beyond 100 feet.
Steele had four throws in the discus and her best one was her second one.
Tanner Hicks had the Phoenix’s other top 10, taking tenth place in the 400-meter run with a 51.24 in one of those closest races of the entire meet.
The top four finishers in the 400-m were just four one-hundredths of a second with a 50.17 winning it and a 50.19 the second place time. Third was a 50.22 and fourth was a 50.22 as GHSA officials had to really split some hairs to figure out who officially ended up where.
Sonoraville also competed in the 110-meter hurdles with Kyler Bonds and Nick Beddington running.