By Tom Waddill
Sports Editor
HUNTSVILLE —
Austin’s Mike Myers Stadium is the place to be this weekend. The top track and field athletes not only in Texas, but from across the United States, will be competing inside a stadium full with the sport’s most passionate fans.
As a reward for weeks of hard work, and also to act as a possible tune-up for next month’s season-ending state meet, Huntsville High School is sending its best athletes to Austin, too.
Eight Lady Hornets and five Hornets will jump on a bus early Friday morning and head to the capital city to participate in the 83rd Annual Clyde Littlefield Texas Relays, one of the nation’s top track events.
“I’m going to be nervous,” freshman Jasmine Williams admitted, “but coach (Joseph) Granville always says, ‘The more nervous you are, the faster you run.’
“We’re going to be all right,” Williams added. “Once we start running, I guess those nerves will go away.”
This will be the first Texas Relays experience for all 13 of the athletes from Huntsville High. Only one of coach Jason Elliott’s Austin-bound athletes has ever competed inside the state-of-the-art track facility located next to Darrell K Royal Texas-Memorial Stadium.
“It’s very stressful,” warned junior Kaylynne Wright, who as a freshman finished fourth in the girls long jump at the UIL State Track and Field Championships. “There are so many fans and everybody’s watching you.”
Wright and her teammates — senior Jamie Brown, junior Shan Moring and Williams — will run in the 400- and 800-meter relays. Preliminary races for the 4-by-200 relays are scheduled Friday at 1:30 p.m. Prelims for the 94 sprint-relay teams start at 9:30 a.m. Saturday.
The Lady Hornets know they’ll be competing against the fastest teams in the state. Dallas Skyline, Houston Westbury, Lancaster and Beaumont Ozen all will be there.
Brown said she’s looking forward to the challenge that awaits this weekend. The team’s goal, though, is to shave time off the season’s best mark. If the Lady Hornets continue to do that for the rest of this month, they may be back in Austin at the end of the spring.
“In Austin, our time is really our concern,” Brown said. “We know we’re going to have some really strong competition, so just placing would be good. Trying to get our time down is really our focus.”
The Lady Hornets will also run the 1,600-meter relay. Freshman Briana McCall and sophomore RaNina Turner (with freshman Sierra Wagner as an alternate) join Moring and Wright on the 1,600 relay, which will compete in prelims late Friday afternoon.
Huntsville sophomore RaKira Turner, a Region III qualifier in two events as a freshman, will throw the discus Saturday morning starting at 9.
“My goal is to get out there and throw my personal best,” Turner said. “I want to throw a 130.”
Earlier this season, Turner finished first in the discus at a meet in Montgomery with a toss of 125 feet, 7 inches. She’s hoping to draw some energy from the huge crowd that will be watching Saturday.
“I’m going to be nervous, but I’m going to go in focused with my mind set on what I have to do,” she said. “I have improved a whole lot since last year. I’m more consistent with my throws, plus I’ve gotten quicker.”
On the boys’ side, Huntsville is sending two of its relay teams, plus one of the Hornets’ top sprinters will compete in the 100-meter dash.
Senior Dimitri Collier, junior Cameron Simmons, sophomore Henry Ford and senior Justin Gilbert will run the 400-meter relay for the Hornets.
Coming off an impressive showing (41.38-second hand time) in Conroe last week, the Huntsville boys have high hopes heading into the Texas Relays.
“We’re working hard in practice, getting stronger,” said Gilbert, who will also run the 100-meter dash against 80 of Texas’ swiftest high school sprinters.
“Right now I think we can win just about every race we run, but we can also do a lot better. We’ve got a lot of room to improve.”
Gilbert and his teammates still ache when they think back to last year’s disappointing performance at the Class 4A Region III meet in Huntsville.
Leading the pack at the last exchange, the Hornets dropped the baton and did not qualify for the region finals.
“We were a little young last year,” Simmons said.
“But we’ve got everybody back and it’s our time now,” added Collier.
So far, the Hornets have shown they are on a mission in 2010. They ran well at Angleton, then “smoked up the track” last week in Conroe, according to Elliott.
Like the Lady Hornets, they’ll be running against the state’s quickest relay teams this weekend, which should give them an indication of how strong they really are.
“A good goal for us is to make the finals and run in the finals,” Huntsville assistant coach Kane Harris said.
“That will help us a lot, to run twice at the Texas Relays. Two reps there would be very good because we plan on being back there the second week in May.”
