Speed leads Fort Bend squads to titles
Marshall repeats in Class 5A, while Stafford dominates in 4A
All season long Fort Bend Marshall had its sights set on repeating as Class 5A boys state champions. Now that the Buffaloes have accomplished that they want to make one thing crystal clear. They want to do it again next year, too.
In the meantime, the Buffs are going to bask in the glory of doing something many outsiders suggested they would not be able to do. Their 52 points Friday night at the University of Texas were plenty to win the championship, putting to rest any question of which track team is the best in Texas.
“There were a lot of naysayers,” coach Lloyd Banks said. “They thought if we lost a few guys from last year we wouldn’t be as strong as we were. My kids took offense to that. They had a chip on their shoulder all year.”
Marshall had all the points they needed when by winning the 4x100- and 4x200-meter relays. There were still five events left in the meet.
Cederian Lynch, Shamon Ehiemua, Jarmaiz Whitaker and John Isom ran on the winning 400 relay. Lynch, Whitaker, Ehiemua and Jeremy Smith comprised the 4x200 relay.
Ehiemua was one of the stars of the meet. He repeated as state champion in the 200 dash in 20.62 seconds.
Just like his team, Ehiemua will be back next season to go for a threepeat. He could be joined by fellow underclassmen Lynch and Tyrell Valentine. The seniors will be big losses, but the Buffs had big losses after winning in 2015, too.
It did not stop this year’s team from aiming to win it all. It won’t stop next year’s team either.
“We never want to shy away from that,” Banks said. “Everything we do is going to be toward us winning a team championships.”
Stafford boys win
One year after Stafford felt like it was robbed of a Class 4A state championship it got a little bit of revenge by winning it. The Spartans scored 50 points to finish 14 points ahead of runner-up Atlanta at UT’s Mike Myers Stadium Saturday night.
Cam Montgomery led the way by winning the 100-meter dash and then helping the 800 relay win the title. The other three on the winning relay were Christopher Brantley, James Brown and David Allison. Montgomery also was on the fourth-place 400 relay team that included Brantley, Brown and Eli Washington.
Caleb Parker won gold in the 110 hurdles and placed third in the high jump.
On the girl’s side, Lynette Amaram repeated as the state champion in the 800-meter run. She also placed fifth in the 1,600.
The Stafford’s boys team title comes a year after it placed second by four points. The Spartans’ closest pursuers from Gilmer crossed the finish line fourth in the final 1,600-meter relay but got moved up to second place when the second- and third finishing teams were disqualified for running out of their lanes.
Rather than winning the team title by four points, Stafford lost by four points.
George Ranch fourth
George Ranch had a pair of gold medalists in juniors Jayson Baldridge and Champion Allison. Baldridge finished first in the 300-meter hurdles. Allison won the title in the 400 dash.
They helped the Longhorns place fourth in the team standings with 34 points. They were two points out of a tie for second.
Hightower golden
In late March Hightower’s girls served notice they were a team to beat by running the nation’s fastest time in the 1,600-meter relay. On Saturday in Austin they added an exclamation point by winning the Class 6A state title.
The team of Jyria Smith, Tyler Rose, Evette Blanks and Birexus Hawkins cruised to a time of 3 minutes, 42.06 seconds to beat runner-up Cypress Springs by a full second.