Team work: Relays help Flagler Palm Coast win the girls district track and field championship

The Bulldogs won their first district title in six years; FPC's boys placed third.

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An unexpected school record by the 4x800 relay team started Flagler Palm Coast’s run to the District 3-4A girls track and field championship. The 4x400 relay team finished it off.

The Bulldogs girls team won its first district title since 2018, while FPC’s boys placed third at the district meet on April 24 at Spruce Creek High School.

“To win this means everything,” said senior Taylor Spann, who automatically qualified for regionals with a fourth-place finish in the 100 hurdles and placed fifth in both long jump and javelin.

The Bulldogs briefly dropped to second place behind Spruce Creek with one event remaining after the Hawks’ Mackenzie and Arianna Roy placed first and second in the 3,200-meter run.

But FPC placed second in the final event, the 4x400 relay, while the Hawks finished seventh. The Bulldogs won by four points over the host team — 128.33 to 124.33. Sanford Seminole placed third with 111.50 points.

Lake Mary (116 points) won the boys championship ahead of Seminole (113) and FPC (88).

FPC athletes won four individual titles: Tanner Cauley-Bennett won the boys pole vault, tying his personal record of 3.90 meters (12 feet, 9.5 inches). Colby Cronk won the boys shot put and Maya Tyson won girls shot put. Zeli Hayworth won boys javelin with a personal record of 57.04 meters (187 feet, 2 inches).

Cronk is the state’s leading shot putter with a school-record distance of 17.75 meters (58 feet, 3 inches) set at Thursday Night Spikes on April 18 at Bartram Trail. Tyson won with a distance of 11.51 meters (37 feet, 9.25 inches). Tyson and Cronk also both placed second in discus, Tyson with a PR of 34.47 meters (113 feet, 1 inch). 

“You don’t get a Colby and a Maya come around in the same year very often,” FPC throws coach Paul Spegele said.

Hayworth placed second at the Class 3A state meet last year when he was with Seabreeze. FPC boys javelin throwers took four of the top five places at district with Elijah Thero second, Jacob Stevenson fourth and Ladarius Simmons fifth.

FPC’s girls 4x800 relay team finished third behind Lake Brantley and Spruce Creek. Both of those teams are ranked among the top five in the state in Class 4A. The Bulldogs’ school-record time of 9:39.43 moved the squad from a 27th ranking in Class 4A all the way up to No. 7.

“We all PR’d,” said Arianna Slaughter, who ran the event with Bella Tarsitano, Cassidy De Young, and Madison Lagarde. “Sometimes a couple of us PR and then others don’t. But we all PR’d today.”

They didn’t even decide to compete in the 4x800 at district until the last minute, they said.

We weren’t going to run the 4-by-8. We haven’t run it for a while, but then we were like, we should run it in case we can go to regionals, maybe states.”
— CASSIDY DE YOUNG

“We weren’t going to run the 4-by-8,” De Young said. “We haven’t run it for a while, but then we were like, we should run it in case we can go to regionals, maybe states.”

They had no idea they had a chance to break the school record of 9:41.64, set in 2018, until Slaughter, running the anchor leg, heard coach David Halliday yelling to her on her final lap: “You can get the school record.”

“I was, like, ‘wait, what?’” Slaughter said. “That gave me some motivation, because I was dying at the end.”

Their previous best was 10:10.50. They dropped more than 30 seconds off their time.

“Now we’re excited for regionals,” Tarsitano said.

The girls 4x400 relay team of De Young, Summer Barnes, Karina Marcelus and Jayden Wright set a personal record of 4:08.96, edging third-place Lake Brantley by four-tenths of a second. When Wright crossed the finish line, the girls knew they had won the team championship.

The 4x100 relay team of Aun’Yale Howard, Olivia Gaines, Jada Dotson and Barnes also placed second (48.73 seconds).

Gaines broke her own school record with a long jump of 5.42 meters (17 feet, 9.5 inches). She also set a personal record in the triple jump at 11.44 meters (37 feet, 6.5 inches). Gaines placed second in triple jump and third in long jump to qualify for regionals in three events.

“It was just a good day,” she said.

Other automatic regional qualifiers for the FPC girls were Barnes (fourth in the 100, third in the 200), Marcelus (third in 100 hurdles), Leilany Rosa (third in pole vault) and Howard (third in javelin with a throw of 107 feet, 7 inches). Howard set a new school record of 109-2 at Thursday Night Spikes.

Also automatically qualifying for the boys were the 4x800 relay team (third place) of Ayden Peterson, Tyler Jones-Bock, Ryan Gilvary and Evan Williams; Chase Magee (fourth in pole vault) and Gethin Pritchard (fourth in shot put).

At-large qualifiers will be announced after the final district holds its meet on May 2. The Region 1-4A championships are scheduled for Wednesday, May 8, at the University of North Florida.

 

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