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Lady Devils win at Tift County Invitational

becky taylor, the tifton gazette, ga.
·4 min read

Oct. 3—becky.taylor@gaflnews.com

TIFTON — The host Lady Devils won two of the four team divisions at the 21st annual Tift County Invitational Saturday, Oct. 1 at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College.

Tift recorded no individual victories on the morning, but had the best team efforts for high school girls and middle school girls. Boys team wins went to Coffee at the high school level and Thomas County Central for the younger runners.

Kate Merritt of Coffee ran in 19:37 to capture the fastest time for high school girls. Worth County's Eyan Zupko won his second straight competition taking place at ABAC, albeit on a different part of the campus. Zupko, whose time was 17:09, won TCHS' Run for Love fundraiser in August.

A pair of Berrien runners, Luke Solomon (11:56) and Autumn Pearson (13:55) were the quickest middle school runners.

Ten high schools and 12 middle school teams competed, despite not knowing until mid-week if the event would be able to run on Saturday. With Hurricane Ian making landfall in Florida, officials from both Tift and ABAC had to wait on its path. Except for a few mid-week wind gusts, Ian missed Tifton completely and the event went on as scheduled.

Had a backup date been needed, it would have been Wednesday, Oct. 5. Instead, the middle school teams will have the course all to themselves for the Big 5 Athletic Conference championships, which begin at 4 p.m.

Tiftarea Academy's Lady Panthers placed 4th at the high school level and 3rd with the middle school boys. Tift's high school boys were nudged by Coffee, 62-60. The Blue Devils had all five runners in the top 20, but Coffee's top four each placed slightly higher. Cook was a close 3rd place finisher at 70 points.

Tift's high school Lady Devils won their event easily, with 47 points to Thomas County Central's 90. The Lady Devils did so on the strength of five runners in the top 14 individually. Lola Reynolds was 6th, Ava Wilson 7th, Kathryn Payne 9th, Emmalyn Lukas 13th and Madeline Perrin 14th.

Tiftarea had strong finishes by Kate Phillips (12th) and Caroline Barksdale (16th) and Sophie Compton (18). Ruthie Mobley placed 25th individually.

Blair Golden was 3rd for the Devils at 17:50, Will Clark came in 21 seconds later for 7th place. Aidan Evans (15th), Russ Benton (16th) and Sergio Martinez (21st, 20th for those on counting towards team scores). Dawson McMillan was 22nd individually and Hayden Roberts placed 26th.

Jude Bailey completed the course in 19:24 for 18 place individually. Tiftarea did not have enough runners to count as a team.

Tift's middle school Lady Devils had 52 points on the day, edging Coffee's 58. Tiftarea scored 69. All of Tift's counting runners were in the top 16, Jovia Burke crossing the finish line in 4th place at 14:30. Bailey Brock was 9th, Laurie Barbee 12th, Stella Byrnes 15th and Katherine Currie 17th individually.

Tiftarea placed three in the top 10 individually, Lizzie Hendricks in 6th at 14:41, Eleanor Walker 7th and Eleanor Dorman 8th.

Thomas County Central and Berrien duked it out in the middle school boys. TCC had 49 points to Berrien's 50. Both placed two runners in the top five.

Henry Anderson of Tift was the only local runner in the top 20, running in 13:15.

Others running for Tift in high school races were Keira Gibbs, Hannah Larger, Lauren Brey and Claire Martin for the Lady Devils and Owen Davies, Anthony Falotico, Keller Tubbs, Karson Ponder, Tucker Dowdy, Jackson Shirts, Jayden Wall, Seth Denham and Cody Radford for the Devils.

Tiftarea's other high school runners were Frances Nelson, Sarah Grace Kozma, Annaliese Hester, Jase Hendricks and Preston Barksdale.

Corey Moorman was Tiftarea's quickest for as many times in two weeks. He was joined on the course by Sawyer Campbell, Ty Sorrels, Uzziah Barton, Ford Bowen, Tate Bailey, Davis Holt and Ford Dark. Sarah Roberts, Jaycee Powell, Ella Branch, Julia Rimoczy, Audrey Paulk, Emri Golden, Honey Terrell and Lilly Kitchens made up the rest of the middle school Lady Panthers' crew.

Tift's middle school male runners also included Nolan Miller, Kellan Lukas, Caleb Thaba, Reid Tubbs, Braden Rehberg, Larkin Saylor, Kason Horner and Logan Mathis. Middle school Lady Devils also featured Jana Webster, Ellie Davies, Katie Gomez, Chloe Gibbs, Izzy Jackson, Elizabeth Crawford, Martha Jane Nelson, Cami Toledo, Mazie Werner and Molly Cameron.