WS Chronicle

Photo by Timothy Ramsey

The young men race to the finish line during the first heat of the 4×100 meter relay.

BY TIMOTHY RAMSEY 

THE CHRONICLE

The outdoor track season came to a dramatic and unforeseen ending last week for Forsyth County middle schools.  The girls from Meadowlark Middle took home the championship on the women’s side.  Initially, the boys from Flat Rock were crowned champions but following a scoring correction the actual winners were the boys from Jefferson Middle.

The Meadowlark girls put on a tremendous performance, displacing Jefferson Middle School as champions.  The Jefferson girls had previously taken home the county championship the previous five years. The Mustangs were led by Jada Dowd, who finished first in the 200 meter dash, first in the 4×200 meter relay and second in the 4×400 meter relay.

“I feel as though I did well but more importantly my team did very well,” Dowd said.  “I pushed myself as much as I could-because this was my last meet as an eighth-grader at Meadowlark Middle School.  It feels good to know that we won the overall girls championship.”

Meadowlark head coach, Amy Sullivan, said coming into the meet she felt as though her girls had a chance to dethrone Jefferson as county champions.

“I am so ecstatic with their performances today and their progress this entire year,” she said. “Throughout the year they have been getting better and better and their times have become faster and faster and I have just loved this season so much.”

“Before the meet I was hoping for the best.  I have been looking at their times and looking at the way they have been training and I felt like we were really strong coming into this meet mentally and physically. I think they have wanted this since February and we all said that this was our goal and we said, OK this is how we are going to achieve it. Every day we have trusted the plan and trusted the process and were able to do great things.”

On the boys side, Flat Rock Middle was initially crowned champions narrowly defeating Jefferson Middle. After a correction in the scoring of the 400 meter dash, it was found that Jefferson had in fact won the championship,Flat Rock head coach Jimmy Warmack says he was highly disappointed for his team that they were not the champions but was happy for the Jefferson squad.

Following the correction, the Jefferson team was notified of the error and informed they had won. Head coach Matt Fossa said he was excited for the kids.

“I don’t typically worry about the team scores all that much,” he said. “It’s more exciting for me to see each of my individual kids growing and getting better. I was also happy to see kids who didn’t expect to run at city/county getting a chance to run even if they only placed 20th. When I’m coaching those are the things I focus on first, but it was exciting to get the news.”

“I have been here 10 years and the head coach for nine of those years. When I first came, in our girls team was really strong and our boys team was weak. Over the years we have just grown and it just snowballed from there. We get all of the athletes in the building participating and it helps out.”

Fossa said he was very proud of the performances of all of his athletes, especially Finley Simmons, who he says is the best boys distance runner he has had since taking over. As far as the sprinters, he says he was very pleased with the efforts of B.J. McIntyre, Tyrese McIntyre, C.J. Cotton, C.J. Arnett and Terrell Robinson.

Fossa said he will be losing many of his sprinters but hopes to regroup with his seventh-graders for next year to make another run at a championship.