There’s still a long way to go, but the Statesboro boys and girls track and field teams are both in competition to defend their Region 2-AAAA titles.
    Friday’s field finals and track preliminaries were delayed for almost two hours as thunderstorms rolled through Statesboro, but the Blue Devils were in top form when the competition commenced.
    The Lady Devils took a pair of first place finishes — worth 10 points each to the team total — in the field competitions.
    Raven Thomas claimed the top spot in the long jump with a leap of 18 feet, 1.5 inches and Alisia Jenkins’ triple jump performance of 36 feet, 8.5 inches was almost two full feet farther than the next closest participant.
    Other point scorers for the Lady Devils in field competitions were Amber Connely’s third place performance in the pole vault and Shanikwa Buie’s seventh place showing in the discus throw.
    Dequan Daniels single-handedly registered all of the SHS boys field points.
    Daniels finished second in the triple jump with a length of 43 feet, 9.5 inches and took fifth in the long jump with a leap of 20 feet, 11 inches.
    As the track preliminaries got underway, the Devils showed the dominance that brought them dual championships a year ago.
    Both of the girls’ 4x100-meter teams qualified for today’s finals, with the ‘A’ squad — featuring Thomas, Heather Wasdin, Mahogany Lanier and Keiyonna Gusby — notching the best run in the field with a time of 48.66 seconds.
    Thomas continued her impressive individual showing in the meet, recording the fastest preliminary time in the 400-meter dash at 59.36 seconds — the only runner to break the one-minute barrier.
    The boys’ 4x100 meter team was almost as impressive as Aaron Lester, Blake Houston, Joseph Mainer and Andrew Taylor turned in a second place performance.
    The track finals will conclude throughout this afternoon with region champions for both boys and girls teams being named at the end of the day.
       
    Mike Anthony can be reached at (912) 489-9404.