Cherokee – Hard work pays off.
And for the Murphy boys’ cross country team, their hard work this season paid off on Oct. 23 as Caleb Jones and company took home some hardware at the Smoky Mountain Conference Championship meet in Cherokee.
Jones, who recently broke Murphy’s long-standing 5000 meter record at a meet in Robbinsville, finished first overall, pacing second place by nearly 13 seconds while Chase Pierce and Andrew Bryson finished third and fifth, respectively.
“It’s just the work that they’ve done,” Murphy cross country coach Davis Bryant said. “I’ve got kids running up to 70 miles per week now, putting in the miles. So you can see what it means now that they’ve won a conference championship.”
Caleb Rice finished in eighth place for the Bulldogs, rounding out the Murphy contingent in the top 10, as sophomore Richard Ly finished in 11th place.
Sophomore Christian Tighe turned in a 17th-place performance, while freshman Clayton Laney wrapped up the Bulldogs finishers in 23rd.
In the team competition, Murphy (28 points) narrowly edged out Hayesville (29 points), claiming the team championship by just one point.
Now the Dogs, along with the Lady Dogs, look ahead towards the Western 1A Regional on Saturday, Nov. 2.
“We’re hoping to podium, that’s our goal,” Bryant said. “We know Lincoln Charter and Hayesville are strong, it’s going to be a fight. And it’s going to be fun.”
Tri-County's Bolyard wins again
Peachtree – Tri-County Early College is known for its academic success, but Sydney Bolyard is putting the school on the map for athletics as well.
The senior Lady Jaguar won her second-straight Smoky Conference championship in cross country on Oct. 23, as she defeated the second-place finisher by 58 seconds at the conference meet in Cherokee.
“There’s some really good competition in our conference, and sometimes it just shakes out who’s up front, who’s running around me, but there were some really good runners out there,” Bolyard said after running the course in 20:47.73. “The weather the other day was super cool and that helped me a lot.”
Bolyard finished sixth in the state last year as a junior and is hoping for more to cap her cross country career. She is the most decorated athlete in the relatively short history of Jaguar athletics.
“Sydney has worked hard to get to this point,” Tri-County Principal Alissa Cheek said. “Tri-County Early College is proud of her accomplishments and happy to have her be the first TCEC student to rank No. 1 in the Smoky Mountain Conference.”
Bolyard said the Lady Jaguars have been working on getting their times down to have a chance to run at the state meet as a group, something else the school has never done. She said the boys team has worked hard as way toward that same goal.
“We’re trying to make some history,” she said.
Bolyard has dominated most of her regular-season meets and faces some stiff competition ahead.
She was second at the 1A western regional meet last year to Lauren Tolbert of Highland Tech, who is just a sophomore this year. Tolbert ran a time of 19:54 at the Friday Night Lights Invitational in September, and she said in an interview with Mile Split that she is working to get her times under 19 minutes.
The western regional meet is Saturday, Nov. 2, in Newton.
Abigail Hemric of North Stokes was the 1A state champion last year, and she is back for another run after putting up a 19:15 in the Northwest Conference meet on Oct. 17.
Bolyard ran a 20:11.18 in Kernersville last year to earn all-state honors.
“I think we have been training on a lot of hills that runners from other parts of the state are not used to,” she said. “When we get to the courses there that are flatter, that sets us ahead with all the training we have done.”
Jaguar teammate Lucy Crayton finished 13th in the conference meet with a time of 23:07.03.