Panther track and field is entering the endgame.
In the last two weeks before the 3A state meet Franklin has been hard at work, traveling to the JDL Fast Track in Winston-Salem and the WNC Championships at Polk. With two WNC team titles and several outstanding individual performances, the team continued to add new scoring opportunities for state.
“That was a really competitive meet,” said head coach Matt Harlfinger of theJDL Fast Track Invitational Jan. 25. “They actually expanded the competition field because going into that week there were so many schools that canceled meets because it was eight degrees outside ... JDL said they were not gonna cancel their meet and they were gonna double the field size, so there were so many more kids there.”
Already one of Franklin’s biggest meets of the year, inclement weather across the region made the Fast Track Invitational even larger, attracting more than 100 teams from across the southeast. At the site of the state meet Feb. 15, multiple Panthers punched their tickets to return.
“At the JDL meet, we walked out of there with three new qualifying marks for the state meet,” said Harlfinger. “Morgan Cress ran the number two time in the 1,600 [in FHS history], and Matheson Post ran the number two time in the 1,000 all-time. ... He’s one of the hardest-working kids we’ve ever had and I was really proud of him to see him reach that milestone. Adam Rogers qualified for the pole vault, and so we’re in a tough spot right now with the boys pole vault where we’ve got four seniors that have all qualified, and I’m only allowed to put three in it.”
With an 11’10” vault in Winston-Salem, Rogers joined Josiah Mascorro, Aaron Dewhurst, and his twin brother, David Rogers as the fourth Panther to punch his ticket to state in the event. Elsewhere on the track, Franklin continued rewriting their school record book.
“We had a lot of personal records – Olivia Ramirez ran a really good 55-meter dash to slide her into the top 10 all-time for Franklin, and she’s just a freshman,” said Harlfinger. “Kai Pelletier had a great 300-meter run personal record. The girls [4x200-meter relay] team finished second place and ran a season-best mark. That was the number three time all-time, and we almost walked out of there with the win. We were three tenths of a second behind the champions.”
Between three new state-qualifying marks and several other strong performances, Franklin impressed at their toughest meet so far this year. A week later they traveled to Polk for the WNC Championships, which doubled as the Mountain Seven Conference title meet.
“The boys and girls were both Conference Champions for the Mountain Seven, and we also won the Western North Carolina Polar Bear Championships, which I’ve been kind of calling a super regional championship,” said Harlfinger. “There were 20-plus schools from Western North Carolina, so it was obviously bigger than the Mountain Seven Conference Meet. On the conference side of things the boys were able to score 203.5 points, which is a new conference record for the indoor championship. The girls scored 226 points, just shy of the 236 that we scored last year, which was a record.”
Tallying scores for both the WNC and Mountain Seven Championships, Franklin turned in a clean sweep, more than doubling the scores of their next closest rivals. With event champions up and down the roster, Franklin put the rest of the region on notice.
“Charley Seagle won the shot put, [Braylen] Dezarn won the long jump and the 55 hurdles, Kamden Reis won the triple jump, CJ Engert won the high jump, Aaron Dewhurst won the pole vault, Laura Covarrubias won the 55 and 300 hurdles, the boys four-by-two and four-by-four teams took first place, and Matheson Post took first place in the 1,000,” said Harlfinger. “It seemed like every time they announced our names we were there in first place.”
In sweeping the WNC Championships for the second straight year, Franklin maintained their status as the region’s powerhouse. With state-qualifying marks from the boys, the team continued to build their state meet contingent.
“This time of year it’s hard to get new state qualifiers, because a lot of the kids that are gonna be competing at the state meet have already performed well enough,” said Harlfinger. “Bray Dezarn qualified in the 55-meter hurdles – he ran the number two time in school history behind Elijah Cochran, who’s a pretty good athlete. Ken Modlin qualified for the 300-meter dash and was also number two all-time behind Elijah Cochran. Those two boys performed really well in those events, and then our boys 4x200 team actually broke the school record by almost two seconds.
With a school-record time of 1:32.93, Tyler Koch, Ken Modlin, Jonas Phillips and Zachary Call also broke a mark helped set by Cochran, the Men’s Most Outstanding Performer at last year’s state meet. Now with 13 qualifying marks on the girls side and seven on the boys, Harlfinger says this year’s team is peaking at the right time.
“I’ve told the kids that the hardest part of the indoor season is hitting the qualifying mark. Once you’re there, everybody’s got a clean slate,” said Harlfinger. “One of the areas where we made a mistake last year was that we just competed too much, and a lot of our season-best marks came out of the first two or three track meets. We were ready and we blew up the scoreboard, hit some big marks early, and then we just tried to maintain, and we really weren’t peaking at the right time as we headed into the championship meet last year. This year, it’s a different feeling. It feels like we did it the right way where we kind of prioritized training early and peaking late, so I’m excited to see what comes out of the state meet.”