Monroe girls third after first day of state track & field meet

ALBANY — Track & field teams from around the state of Georgia met at Hugh Mills Stadium Thursday for the first day of the Georgia High School Association state meet.

The day kicked off with field events in which several state champions were crowned by noon. Monroe High School’s Ashley Harrell took second in the shot put with a throw of 39-feet, 9-inches, while Jahari Williams finished third in the long jump at 18-9, giving the Lady Tornadoes much needed points.

After six events, Woodward Academy led Class AAAA with 25 points, followed by Baldwin with 23 and Monroe with 18.

Things didn’t go so smoothly for the Westover Lady Patriots. Tiana Campbell finished ninth in the long jump, Bryshea Jackson finished 10^th in the high jump and sixth in the triple jump and Shakyra Horton missed the cut for the 400-meter dash by a few places. Head coach Octavia Jones said it wasn’t the outcome they were shooting for, but they at least saw where they stack up in the tough class.

“I think in our classification, it’s pound for pound the toughest classification,” he said, “Four A is the toughest classification from top to bottom, so we’ve got to go out and PR and put down some good times and distances because these girls really showed up here in Albany in class 4A. We’re just not where we want to be to be able to place as high as we wanted to.”

He added that the one good takeway from the day is that the athletes who represented Westover in the field events are juniors and will have time to regroup and give it one more shot.

“This always good because it gives you a chance to see stuff that you haven’t seen all year long,” he said. “We’re used to seeing teams from around this area all year long and we’re kind of in our comfort zone. So to run against other schools that run this all year round, that gives you a true measuring stick as to where you are. Hopefully that’ll motivate them to come back next year and do a little better.”

The day came to a close with track events. Monroe’s Jaeda Hunt was among the standout local runners as she finished first in the 400-meter dash preliminaries with a time of 56.44 and will compete in the finals. The Lady Tornadoes earned a spot in the 4X100 relay finals after finishing second with a time of 46.45 along with Albany High’s squad who came in sixth in the preliminaries with a time of 47.73.

There will be several other local runners competing in the finals which will take place on Saturday starting at 11 a.m. Today, Classes AAAAA and AAAAAA hit the track for preliminary events with Class A through AAAA holding 1600 meter finals at 6:20 p.m.