Calhoun girls take 7-5A championship
The Calhoun High School girls track and field team is the 2023 Region 7-5A champions.
Securing just one individual Region trophy, but having a large number of medalists and girls qualifying for next week’s Sectional meet, the Lady Jackets notched 182 points to run away from the rest of the field.
The only real question at meet’s end was who would come in second and when the two days of competition was complete, the Woodlands girls were the Region runners-up with 130.5 points and Cartersville was an ohso-close third with 129.5. The Dalton girls were fourth with 110.
The top four finishers in each event advance to the upcoming Sectionals and the Yellow Jackets qualified at least one girl in 14 of the 16 events and more than one in over half of those 14.
Sophomore Mariah Anthony led the way for Calhoun, qualifying for the Sectionals in four different events by securing their only individual Region championship and placing second in three other events.
She won the long jump for the Jackets’ lone gold medal, taking the event with a distance of 16 feet, three inches. She won by nearly a foot with the second place length being a 15-07 and only three of the girls in the event went 15 feet or beyond.
Besides winning the long jump, Anthony
qualified for the 5A Sectionals by coming in second in the 100- and 200-meter runs and the 300-meter hurdles.
And the Lady Jackets cleaned up in those sprint events, by placing second, third, and fourth in the 100 and second and third in 200-. That meant five more spots in the next set of track and field playoffs.
Anthony ran a 12.58 for the silver medal in the 100-meters with senior teammate Britiya Curtis third for the bronze with a 13.01, just a step ahead of junior McKenzie Cumbee, who came in fourth at 13.02.
Kaitlyn Godwin of Cass won both
CHAMPS,
the 100- and 200- races, running a 12.12 in the 100 and a 26.28 in the 200.
In that 200, Anthony led a pair of Calhoun runners that earned medals to the finish line with a 2-3 finish. Anthony took her third medal of the meet with a 26.92 and Cumbee earned third place with a 27.78 for her second.
Sophomore Libby Brannon gave the team another top five finish in the event, running a 28.62 for fifth place.
In the 300 hurdles, Calhoun also qualified two girls to the next round with Anthony placing second and fellow sophomore Kat Atha taking fourth.
Anthony ran a 16.12 with the winning time a 15.78 and she was pushed until the very end with the third place showing a 16.15 officially. Atha was fourth with a 17.21.
And Atha will be in both hurdles competitions at the Sectionals after she was the 7-5A runner-up in the 300-meters with a 48.09 time that saw her finish three seconds ahead of the third place effort
— a 51.19.
Sophomore Yadhira Valdivia gave Calhoun two runners in the first five with Valdivia fifth with a 51.66 and she just missed advancing with the fourth place time officially a 51.64.
Freshman Gracison Saylors will be in three different field events at Sectionals after she was second in the triple jump and third in both the high jump and pole vault at the 7-5A meet.
In the triple jump, Saylors started a 2-3 finish for Calhoun, coming in second with a distance of 34 feet, two inches and junior Ayla Hiles was third at 33-01.
In the high jump and pole vault, Calhoun was third and fifth as a team.
Saylors took third in the high jump at 4-10 despite the top three finishers all officially ending at that height. Calhoun senior Asiyah Pritchett was fifth in the field at 4-06.
Saylors went 7-feet even for third place in the pole vault as the third, fourth and fifth place effort were all that height. Atha also went over the bar at 7-feet, but was officially determined to be in fifth place.
The winning jump was eight feet even and second place
was a 7-6 vault.
Sophomore Carolynn Dooley qualified for the Sectionals for Calhoun in both the distance events — finishing third in the 3,200-meter run and fourth in the 1,600.
In the two-mile, Dooley was surrounded by a trio of Woodland runners with the Wildcats placing first, second and fourth to send three girls to Sectionals.
Dooley ran a 13:16.35 with the winning time a 12:17.06 and she was 20 seconds faster than the fourth place time of 13:36.67 as the first four girls to get to the finish line were pretty spread out.
In the mile, Dooley ran a 5:39.13 for the final Sectional qualifying time and she was five seconds ahead of the fifth place of 5:44.16.
Senior Drilona Prenku was fourth in the discus with Calhoun girls coming in fourth, fifth and sixth in the field of nearly 20 competitors.
Prenku had a best distance of 80 feet, 10.25 inches to punch her ticket to the next round with just seven feet separating the first four places and less than two feet between second and fourth place.
The winner had an 87-08.75, but second place was an 8200.75
and third was an 8302 so Prenku was definitely also in medal contention all day long as well.
Sophomore Berkly Tallent and junior Ryan Wade were next in the field for Calhoun with Tallent fifth at 76-08.5 and Wade sixth at 72-06.5.
Besides all the outstanding individual efforts, the Lady Jackets also did very well in the relays, moving on in all four of them with two second places, a third, and a fourth.
Calhoun was second in both the 4-x-200 and the 4-x-400.
In the half-mile, Dalton won it with a 1:49:18 and the Yellow Jackets ran a 1:52.25 with Cartersville third at 1:53.97.
Sophomore Anna Grace Braeden, Cumbee, freshman Maggy Abernathy, and Pritchett made up the Calhoun 800 relay.
In the mile, the Cartersville girls were first, running a 4:18.26 and Calhoun closed with a 4:23.72, five seconds in front of third place Woodland. Dooley, Atha, senior Laura Watson and Braden on the anchor leg was the Jackets’ 4-x-400 squad.
Calhoun came in third in the 4-x-100 relay and that event was one of the closest of the entire meet with just over a second separating the top three teams. Cass won it with a 50.03 with Dalton second at 51 seconds even and Calhoun was just a couple of steps behind, running a 51.63.
Abernathy, Curtis, Watson, and Cumbee ran the 400 relay for Calhoun.
The fourth place showing in the long 4-x-800 made it a clean sweep of the relays as far as advancing to Sectionals for the locals, who ran a 12:21.15 time.
Sophomore Beyonce Brito, Tallent, Dooley, and sophomore Guilianna Lopez made up Calhoun’s 3,200-meter relay team.