WS Chronicle

The Carver High School boys and girls track and field teams showcased their talents at the 1A Northwest Piedmont Conference Championships at North Stokes on May 2. According to Yellowjacket coaches, there were several conference records set by their athletes at the meet.

Overall, the boys finished 2nd as a team and the girls finished 4th. For the boys, coaches say meet records were set in the 100m (Reshard Norwood), 300m hurdles (Derrick Reid Jr.), 110m hurdles (Jaden Gause-Hughes), long jump (Reid Jr.) and the 4x400m relay team. When it comes to the girls, they say the records were set in the 100m (Morgan Good), 200m (Good), and the 4x100m relay team.

Even though they did not come away with the conference championship for either team, their athletes performed admirably and were proud of their accomplishments

“I just knew I was going to go in there and dominate, I just have that self-confidence,” said Gause-Hughes, who also finished second in the 300m hurdles. “My ninth-grade coach got me into running the hurdles and I just did it. It took me a while to get the technique, but I got it.”

Good, who is only a freshman, performed well in the short sprints by winning the 100m and the 200m races. She was surprised by her performance but knows she has more in the tank as she matures on the track.

“I am very proud of myself that I actually set a record,” said Good. “I broke a record in middle school, and I thought I wasn’t going to do it in high school, but I did. I have been running since I was five and I don’t know how good I can actually be.”

Head track coach Donald Carter has been at the helm for eight seasons. With this young core of athletes, he feels there is a lot of hope for the future for both the boys and girls team.

“I had a real good idea that they could perform well,” said Carter. “These kids are talented and when track season started, the coaching staff saw that talent, so it was our job to get that talent together to have these kinds of results.

“All of these coaches knew that we had that talent, it was just a matter of putting that talent on the track the right way. All those intangibles on the track we had to get right, and I think the coaching staff did a really good job of doing that.”

While he was confident in the capabilities of his athletes, even Carter was surprised with the number of records that were set that afternoon.

“That was a surprise and during the course of the meet, the announcer kept saying ‘meet record, meet record’ and before we knew it, it got up to nine,” he continued.  

Carver High School has a deep and storied history when it comes to sports, with many championships across several different sports on both the boys and girls side. For Carter, that history stays with him at all times.

“We like to think that Carver Nation has a rich history here and we don’t look at what the outside community says about Carver,” Carter went on to say. “We know for a fact what we have here at Carver because 90% of these coaches are Carver alum. We know exactly what we have here at Carver, we know the talent we have here, we just like for the kids to know it. We don’t think the kids know how much talent is here.”

What made Carver’s team finish at the conference meet so impressive was that neither the boys nor the girls team had an athlete compete in an event longer than the 400m. With no long-distance runners, they were severely handicapped and still finished top 5 on both sides.

“We didn’t have any long-distance runners and not having them put us in second place,” he said. “If we can solidify those long-distance runners, it’s no doubt Carver will be conference champs for a long time.”

Carter has high expectations for the future with the young core of Good, Gause-Hughes and Reid all having multiple years of eligibility remaining. He feels the work his coaching staff will put in with these young athletes will bode well for them come their respective senior years.