Fayetteville Sweeps 7A-West Track Titles

FAYETTEVILLE -- Fayetteville's boys were off to the races before the running finals started Thursday afternoon. The Bulldogs used the field events to build an insurmountable lead and went on to win the 7A-West Conference track title at Ramay Junior High. Fayetteville scored 173 points, while followed by Bentonville with 145.5 and Springdale Har-Ber with 139. Blake Young won the shot put, where he led Fayetteville's one-two-three finish in that event with a winning toss of 54 feet, 10.75 inches, then captured the discus with his throw of 152-0. Meanwhile, Caleb Cooper continued his winning ways in the triple jump with his leap of 45-5.25, and Tyson Morris took the long jump at 22-7, edging Rogers High's Jake Benninghoff by less than an inch. "The big thing was we started out well," Fayetteville coach Drew Yoakum said. "We knew other teams had a lot, and our distance kids came up big that really made the difference. Three runners in the 3,200 really solidified things a big win for us." The Bulldogs kept enough distance from the other teams with their work in the longer running events. Freshman Camren Fischer and senior Collin Pilkington turned in a one-two finish in the 1,600-meter run, then Ben Farrell captured the 3,200. On the girls side, Fayetteville also won the team title with 220 points to second-place Bentonville's 185. High-point winner McKenzie Penne, who won the 100 hurdles and the long jump, paced the Lady Purple'Dogs, who also enjoyed wins by Jurnee Britt in the 100, Jazmyn Chenault in the 200, Jasmine Franklin in the shot put, Jameisha Jones in the 400, Rebecca Boushelle in the 1,600, Adriana Kitchen in the triple jump and by two of the three relay teams. "We've had the kids, but it's been sporadic," Yoakum said. "We're big on sharing kids here, and they've been in other sports. Finally, we had them all here, and it gives us a chance. "Two people really come to mind -- Rebecca in all those distance races and ran in the 4x400. McKenzie Penne came up big, and of course, Pink and Blue (Jones) ran well in the 4x100. Pink had never done that before and did well." Three meet records were broken, including both pole vault marks. Bentonville junior Isabel Neal cleared 12-0 on her first try to break the previous mark of 11-8 she cleared in last year's meet, then Har-Ber junior Zach McWhorter did it on the boys side when he cleared 16-7, surpassing the previous mark of 16-0 owned by Fayetteville's Chris Adams in 1988. The only running record broken came in the boys 400, where Har-Ber's Tevin Eckwood ran it in 48.71 seconds and broke the meet record of 49.14 set by Fayetteville's Ben Shankle in 1996. He was being pushed by Bentonville's Billy Horton III, whose time of 48.90 also surpassed the previous meet record. Sports on 04/29/2016

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Fayetteville High School Athletics

FAYETTEVILLE SWEEPS 7A-WEST TRACK TITLES

HENRY APPLE

NWADG | 4/29/2016

PHOTO CREDIT: NWADG