Robbinsville – It came down to the final race.
After a 1-2-4 finish in the 200-meter dash gave Murphy Middle School a three-point lead over Hayesville in the Smoky Mountain Conference Middle School championships on April 25, all the Bulldogs had to do was finish one spot behind Hayesville in the 4x400-meter relay.
However, going into the final leg, Hayesville was in first and Andrews in second. The Wildcats anchor was O’Malley Salinas, who had won both the 800- and 1,600-meter runs earlier in the meet.
Murphy anchored with seventh-grader Andrew White, who caught Salinas from behind in the final straight away to clinch the conference title by one point. It’s Murphy Middle’s first track and field conference championship since 2018.
“We talked about before we went over there (that) it wasn’t all about individual performances,” head coach Robert Payne said. “It was about everybody’s effort. Every second counted on the track.”
The Bulldogs were led by Payne’s son, Ryan, an eighth-grader who won the 100-meter (12.13 seconds), 200-meter (24.81) and 400-meter (54.26) dashes.
Payne also teamed up with Camden Breazeale, Cale Harger and Cameron Clem to win the 4x100-meter relay (46.99). Breazeale, Landan Ennis, Clem and Harger teamed up to win the 4x200-meter relay (1:42.71)
Andrews Middle School boys also had a strong showing, finishing in third place. Besides winning two individual events, Salinas ran the anchor leg of the first-place 4x800-meter relay (9:52.21) team. He was preceded in the race by Braylen Maennle, Myca Mustin and Gabe Clark.
The Wildcats did well in the field, too, with Mustin winning the triple jump (36 feet, 1 inch), seventh-grader Sam Bateman winning the long jump (18’11) and eighth-grader Logan Shuler winning the high jump (5’7).
On the girls side, Andrews Middle eighth-grader Kaiya Ellis took first in the 100-meter hurdles (18.68), while Martins Creek eighth-grader Fern Crayton won the 1,600-meter run (5:54.15). That broke her own school record in the event, and she also finished second in the 800-meter run with a new school record of 2:41.09.