PEMBROKE — The Richmond Senior High School girls’ track and field team was two events away from claiming the 2019 Sandhills Athletic Conference championship.
Instead, it was Pinecrest High School that won its second-straight SAC title, notching a meet-best 181 points on Wednesday at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.
Head coach Reggie Miller’s team wasn’t far behind, as Richmond took second overall with 155.5 points. Miller was also named this season’s SAC “Coach of the Year.”
“We were up eight points at event 17 of 19,” Miller explained. “And then Pinecrest scored 28 points in the 3200-meter run and won the conference championship.
“Ariel Brown and Jakerra Covington scored points for us in all four of their events,” he added. “Ariel has the most to do out of all of our athletes … it’s hard to do what she does because it takes a lot of endurance. But she did very well.”
Covington, a sophomore, recorded a team-high 29 points, 19 of which were in solo events. She placed first in the high jump with a height of 5’-0” (10 points), took third in the 100-meter dash (12.71 seconds, six points) and finished sixth in the long jump (15’-10”, three points).
She was also a part of the 4×100-meter relay team that repeated as the SAC champions. The foursome sprinted the lap around the track in 49.53 seconds, which gave Richmond 10 more points. Covington was joined by junior teammates Maddisyn Diggs, Monasia Kearns and Dymond McNeal.
Brown, a distance runner, also posted near the top of her four events, and collected 23 points. Her best finish of the day was with the second-place 4×800-meter relay team, which she ran the first leg and helped the Lady Raiders finish with a time of 10:57.12.
Joining her in the runner-up finish were Zamiya McInnis, Sierra Ramsay and Taliyah Cobb.
Individually, Brown took third in the 800-meter run (2:32.98, six points), fifth in the 3200-meter race (13:48.50, four points) and sixth in the 1600-meter run (5:59.96, three points).
McNeal took second in the 200-meter dash with a time of 26.47 seconds, adding eight points to the Lady Raiders’ tally. Kearns earned sixth in the same event, coming in at 27.16 seconds for three more points.
Other notable finishes for the Lady Raiders included freshman Jaleah McKinnon and sophomore Jamaya Bryant’s fourth and fifth-place finishes in the 300-meter hurdles. The duo clocked in with times of 51.08 seconds and 54.68 seconds, respectively, for a combined nine points.
The 4×400-meter relay team comprising of Ramsay, Aniya Robinson, Briauanna Wall and Jocelyn Hunter earned six points with a third-place finish.
Rounding things out for Richmond was junior Jardai Tillman’s third-place mark in the shot put, throwing to a distance of 34’-1”. Teammate Janai Davis took fourth (31’-11”). Freshman Rayana Shubert was the best Richmond finisher in the discus, landing a throw of 84’-11” for fourth place.
ROSports will update regionals information when it becomes available.
