First Flight girls medal at NC indoor track meet
KILL DEVIL HILLS, N.C. — A First Flight High School freshman finished with gold, and a sophomore took silver and bronze in the 2024 Indoor Track and Field State Championships held Feb. 10 in Winston-Salem.
Ninth grader Kayla Folkes won the 1,000-meter girls race, and 10th grader Morgan Miller placed second in the girls 3,200meter race and third in the girls’ 1,600-meter race.
Folkes “ran to glory” at the State 3A Championships that Saturday night, and teammate Moira Furr finished fifth, according to Dan Murray, First Flight’s track coach.
“I was kind of like in shock. … Crossing the line, I was like: ‘I just won that,’ ” Folkes said over the phone Tuesday. “It’s pretty amazing to be state champ.”
The 15-year-old said she started running track in middle school as “a filler season” between basketball and soccer.
“I ended up being good at it,” she said. “When you’re good at a sport, it makes you like it more.”
She’d planned to play high school basketball and soccer, but she has changed course now. She ran cross country in the fall, and with the indoor track season finished, she’s gearing up for outdoor track.
“The team’s super sweet and welcoming; that just made the experience so much better,” she said.
Folkes qualified for six state indoor track events and ended up running in two.
“I’m definitely excited for what’s to come and (to) see how much better I can get,” she said.
The school had a total of 13 state championship qualifiers for indoor track, “which I think is a high for us,” Murray said.
“I think it takes a special kind of kid to excel in indoor track, hailing from the Outer Banks,” he said.
There is no indoor track in the area.
That means local student-athletes must brave “cold, forbidding” and “harsh” elements for practice. They compete against peers who have trained in “much more favorable conditions,” he said.
“It really takes a special kind of will,” and it’s “a tribute to their strength,” Murray said. “We do all of our training in the worst wind maybe outside of Wyoming.”
Last week, he said Miller was doing 200-meter repeats in a 40 mph wind, with gusts that reached 75 mph. “At one point I looked, and she was going backwards.”
Miller’s third-place finish at states took place “in a highly competitive” 1,600-meter run, and she also finished second in the 3,200-meter race, according to Murray.
“Lucy Stecher also scored in the 3,200-meter run, finishing eighth overall,” he said in a short write-up of the event.
Also on Feb. 10, Catalina Lokie became the highest-placing shot putter in First Flight indoor track history, making the finals and finishing ninth, Murray noted.
The four boys comprising the school’s 4×800-meter squad won their heat and placed fifth overall, with their best time ever for runners Alex Lutz, Chase Matis, Liam Minnich and Judah LaCroix, Murray wrote.
“LaCroix came back to score in the 3,200-meter run, placing seventh,” he added.
With her win, Folkes became the school’s third distance runner to win a state championship in the past year, Murray noted.
Miller as a freshman won the 3,200-meter indoor state championship a year ago, and then-senior Tatum Dermatas won the 3,200-meter outdoor track state championship last May, with Miller placing second, Murray said.
First Flight High School competes as a 3A school, per the North Carolina High School Athletic Association categories. The divisions range from 1A — the smallest schools — to 4A, which are the largest.
Another high school in Dare County, Manteo High School, sent three athletes to states, where they competed in the combined 1A/2A indoor track events, according to the North Carolina High School Athletic Association’s posted results.
Manteo’s Caroline Gay placed sixth in the girls’ pole vault, and Anna Maner placed 15th in the girls’ triple jump, results showed. Isaac Jarvis placed fifth in the boys’ pole vault and 11th in the boys’ high jump.
Currituck County High School, a 3A school in the county north of Dare, sent 10 student-athletes to states, which is the most for indoor track since Coach Rob Dinterman started coaching four years ago, he said.
He said it was a “strange season,” where several athletes were beset with injuries.
None of Currituck’s runners made the podium, but “I was happy with their accomplishments,” Dinterman said.
Two runners who made it to states — one boy and one girl — were also starters on the school’s basketball teams. Dinterman said they never attended track practice, but were just “showing up and using natural talent.”
They both had basketball games the night of Feb. 8 in Pasquotank County before having to drive to Winston-Salem in time for the state races Feb. 9, he noted.
Another dual athlete on his team made it to the state championship for swimming, which took place Feb. 8 in Winston-Salem. He came back that Thursday evening only to turn around and travel back across the state the next day with the track team, Dinterman said.
The boys were “only three seconds away from the last medal spot in the 4×4,” he noted.
And over the course of the season, Currituck’s runners broke five of the school’s indoor track records, he said.
Dinterman said he is good friends with First Flight’s coach. “I always joke with Dan: ‘All yours are all in with running, all the time.’ ”