With their respective region meets looming on the schedule next week, the track and field teams of Statesboro and Southeast Bulloch both built up a head of steam heading into the postseason.
    Friday night at Womack Field, Statesboro’s girls won and the boys notched a second place finish while the SEB girls set a pair of new school records at the Statesboro Relays and finished second behind SHS.
    With 11 schools in attendance, Friday served as a great opportunity for both schools to get their pieces in order for next week.
    As usual, the Lady Devils dominated the competition. The SHS boys have also blazed a trail through their schedule, but came up just short of Bradwell Institute in the standings.
    “Overall, I like how we’ve been performing,” SHS coach Rico Campbell said. “We came up a little short in a few events, but I think we can bounce back. You never like to lose any events, but maybe that can be a little more motivation for us moving forward.”
    Matched up against many schools multiple classifications above it, SEB rose to the challenge. The Lady Yellow Jackets kept up the solid performances that they have produced all season for the second place showing.
    “It’s always good to be able to challenge ourselves,” SEB coach Jolie Britt said. “These are some really big schools we’re competing against, but everyone stepped up. That’s the kind of mentality and performances we need.”
    A couple of the Lady Jackets turned in performances never before seen by SEB. Breanna Gates set a new school record in the long jump with her mark of 18 feet, 6 inches while Jasmine Roberts took second with a leap of 17 feet, 10 inches. Philicia Batton came just short of etching her name in the school record books, clearing the 100-meter hurdles in just 15.62 seconds and taking first overall.
    “A lot of our girls did a phenomenal job today,” Britt said. “Heading into region, we have a lot of experienced girls that will hopefully continue to help us.”
    Southeast Bulloch travels to Dublin next week for the Region 3-AA meet. Preliminaries will be held Monday, with finals being contested Tuesday evening. Statesboro travels to Ware County for the Region 2-AAAA preliminaries Wednesday and will return Saturday for the region finals.

    Mike Anthony can be reached at (912) 489-9404.