It’s been a good year for Panther track and field.
With two 3A men’s titles and two top-three women’s finishes at this year’s 3A Indoor and Outdoor State Championships, 2022-23 will be a year long remembered in the annals of Panther athletics. After ending their season at the outdoor state meet in Greensboro May 19, a few of the team’s top athletes shared their thoughts on a historic year.
Women
After losing the 3A indoor state title to Dudley on a technicality, the Panther women entered the outdoor season determined to take home gold. As the season wore on, Franklin proved they had the athletes needed for the more-competitive outdoor season, but injuries to two of their top runners cast their state meet hopes into doubt.
“Isabelle [Duchemin] and I actually both dealt with an injury for a little over a month during outdoor season,” said junior sprinter Hope Smith. “I was a little bit worried if I was gonna be able to perform the way that I was supposed to, so I was a little bit extra-nervous about that – just making sure that my foot would be OK and that I’d be able to perform the same way.”
After Smith suffered an overuse injury and Duchemin hyperextended her ankle, coaches Matt Harlfinger and Melissa Ward weren’t sure when they might get their standout upperclassmen back, or what they might look like if they did. When both returned just in time to win the 3A West Regional over statewide contenders West Henderson and Statesville, Franklin’s roster was back at full strength, but conditions in Greensboro presented their own challenge.
“It definitely affected the [4x200-meter relay], because we ran in the pouring rain,” said Duchemin. “Our handoffs were kind of hard getting the baton around the track, but thankfully by the time of the four-by-one it had cleared up and the track wasn’t as flooded. … It definitely affected our time a little bit, but it wasn’t too, too bad.”
Despite the wet conditions, the Panthers were unphased, placing fifth in the 4x200 (1:46.52) and third in the 4x100 (49.81). Between these and other top finishes like Charley Seagle’s fourth-place shot put (37’5.25”) and Boston Stringer’s third-place pole vault (10’6”), Franklin ranked among the meet’s top teams throughout the day, with one performance in particular defying expectations.
“Matt came up to me and told me that he wanted me to become a hurdler, probably in March,” said sophomore Laura Covarrubias, who also joined Smith, Duchemin and freshman Michelle Ortega in the sprint relays. “And so we slowly started training. It wasn’t full-on hurdle training because it was new; we were just trying to ease [into it]. … It was incredibly nerve-wracking, but I’m so thankful because Matt just believed in me the entire time.”
Scarcely eight weeks after training in hurdles for the very first time, Covarrubias turned in a near-unbelievable result, earning silver in the 300-meter with a time of 44.65. She also placed seventh in the long jump (16’4.75”). In a perfect microcosm of her young career, the sophomore said she was actually unhappy with the result, putting the state’s other 3A hurdlers on notice.
“It was just so close; I think I was a little upset,” she said of the finish. “I guess Matt had seen what I could do at a Rabun Gap meet when I did the hurdles for the first time, and he just constantly told me I was gonna be a great hurdler. It took me a while to believe it.”
With Covarrubias’s silver serving as the team’s best finish, the Panther women earned 35 points for the day, tying West Cartaret for third and beating conference rival West Henderson by a point. In helping Franklin to their second top-three state finish of the year, the team’s star senior said she was happy to end her Panther career on a high note.
“I was really excited. It was a very good way to end,” she said. “I’ve definitely improved a lot. This year I did get injured so that was a little bit of a setback, but I definitely have grown a lot, even just emotionally and mentally. … It’s really sad, especially because there’s only a few seniors, so a lot of my best friends get to keep competing with each other. But I’m really excited to watch them and cheer them on not on the team next year.”
Following the last official meet of the season, Duchemin will have one more chance to represent Franklin in the Adidas Outdoor Nationals, also in Greensboro June 16-18. After just two Panthers made the trip last year, the team is sending a host of athletes, both male and female, to this year’s meet. With Duchemin competing for Wofford next year and fellow seniors Hannah Ludwig, Mykayla McClure and Renae Younce having graduated this past weekend, the team will turn to Smith and her fellow rising seniors for examples.
“I definitely want to try to be the best leader that I can for the team, and kind of do what the seniors did,” she said. “First of all, I think it’s just being a good example to the team, and when people are slacking just tell them, ‘Come on, let’s go!’ [It’s] just being a good example for the team, doing what’s right, doing what the coaches ask, being super-positive and not complaining.”
Men
After winning the 3A indoor title in February, the Panther men were destined to receive every other team’s best shot this outdoor season. Much like Covarrubias in the hurdles however, the team had a secret weapon in a talented but green athlete still coming into his own.
“I actually did some in middle school, but I was not very good, and it’s been a long time since then,” said basketball standout Cal Drake, who rejoined Panther track and field for his senior year. “I always wanted to try it again but never thought about actually doing it. Then one day, they were having a send-off for one of the other teams, and [junior sprinter/hurdler] Elijah Cochran was out there. He told me, ‘Hey, you should join the track team. Our coach is right there; you should go talk to him.’ … I went over there and talked to him with Elijah, and that was pretty much it.”
A natural fit for the jumping events due to his hoops experience, Drake split time between both teams this winter, leading Panther basketball to a 20-win season and earning silver in the indoor high jump championship (6’2”). This outdoor season, Drake’s role only grew, qualifying for state in the high jump, triple jump and 4x200-meter relay.
After a resounding win at regionals, in which they routed second-place North Lincoln 110-83.5, Franklin entered the 3A state meet as true contenders for the second time this year. There, one of the team’s most experienced athletes led the way.
“I didn’t get what I wanted to get – not nearly – but a win’s a win. I made it onto the Christmas card,” said senior Blake Cassada of his gold medal-winning pole vault. “If you had told freshman me that I’d ever even be close to winning state, I would have laughed. The best place I’d ever placed in any event at any meet was like eighth, and so to actually have won the state meet was like an unreal thing for me. Almost like a dream.”
In clearing 13’6”, out-jumping the second-place finisher by six inches, Cassada earned his second state title this year after winning the indoor state meet in February. The event was easily Franklin’s most productive of the day, as sophomore Adam Rogers also placed fifth (12’6”) and junior Aaron Jennings placed seventh (12’6”). The trio’s finish was made more impressive by the fact that Harlfinger spent a large part of the event unable to coach them on their vaults. Instead, the men’s head coach was pleading his case with meet officials after an error threatened to rob the team of points.
“The top nine go to the finals in triple jump, and I had just finished the high jump and the four-by-two,” said Drake. “I got over there and was already a little late from the four-by-two, and so they were like, ‘You’ve got to jump now.’ I went ahead and jumped and didn’t have my best jump, so I was sitting there not really expecting to get called anyways. ... I went back, threw off my spikes and was gonna eat some food before the four-by-four, and coach runs up to me and is like ‘Hey, go get your spikes.’”
Because the rain had smudged Drake’s name from the list of top finishers in the preliminaries, the senior was excluded from the initial announcement of finalists. Realizing the error, Harlfinger and sprint/relay coach Robbie Tompa filed a protest with meet officials, who eventually agreed and granted Drake his final jumps.
“Because they had already finished all the rankings, coach told me I needed to beat 43’3” to get top-four, which is on the podium,” said Drake of his late start in the finals, after the other finalists had completed their jumps. “My first jump was like 42 feet, my second jump was like 42 feet-something, and so on the third one I wanted to get on the poduim. I wanted the medal, I wanted more points for the team, so I really went all-out on the last jump and got 43’6.5”. Not even a PR [personal record], just the best I could do at that point, but that’s all I needed to get on the podium and get those extra points for the team.”
In an improbable fourth-place finish, Drake earned his third trip to the podium for the day, having finished second in the high jump (6’6”) and fourth in the 4x200-meter relay (1:30.81) along with Cochran, senior Isaiah Roots and freshman Justin Rodriguez. Between these and other finishes like Roots’ third-place 400-meter dash (49.45), junior Logan Russo’s fifth-place 800-meter run (1:56.63) and Russo, Barrett Stork, Aaron Ashe and Matheson Post’s third-place 4x800-meter relay (8:14.69), Franklin entered the final event in first place.
“Going into the four-by-four, they still hadn’t factored in the pole vault points,” said Harlfinger of the meet scorekeepers. “Finally, the points show up on the scoreboard, and now we’re in first place. So then we kind of controlled our own destiny from there – we knew that we had to beat Dudley. By that point Croatan was 12 points behind us, and you can only score 10 points.”
Entering the 4x400-meter relay with a narrow lead, Franklin’s state title hopes rested on the shoulders of Roots, Drake, Cochran and Rodriguez, in the kind of dramatic scene rarely seen in track and field.
“When it came down to the four-by-four, I was really nervous for it ... it came down to the four-by-four to win state,” said Rodriguez.
Running with three upperclassmen, Rodriguez was thrust into a position few freshmen have ever experienced, needing to run a clean race to help bring his team a state title. The pressure wasn’t enough to phase the team however, who placed third in 3:24.41 to beat Dudley by less than three seconds. The finish cemented a 59.5-54 victory for Franklin, the team’s first outdoor state title since 1995.
“I was looking at the times, keeping track of the splits and total time on my phone of when they were gonna come through,” said Cassada of watching the relay from beside the track. “When they passed me, it looked like it was gonna be close. We were ahead ... and I yelled it out, and we all immediately started celebrating, because we knew we had won it right there.”