Eight is Enough

All season Port St. Joe High School girls track coach Kenny Parker had a simple philosophy.
It went something like this - get off the bus at each meet, do what we are supposed to do and everything else will take care of itself.
Along the way, the Lady Tiger Sharks won the prestigious Ram and Panhandle Relays and history-laden North Florida Relays as well as a second-place finish in the district and a Region 1-1A title.
Last Friday night, that step-by-step deliberative approach hit the stretch run and ended in a sprint to the state Class 1A championship, the 22nd state title of any kind in school history and the first for a girls track team - at least as far as anybody can remember.
"We showed up, I'm proud of them," Parker said late Friday from Winter Park High School, the site of the Class 1 track and field championships. "They did a good job; they did what they were supposed to do."
Or maybe it was simply the socks, knee-high black numbers with triangles of fluorescent hues which made the Port St. Joe team distinctly distinguishable, even from a distance, and served as something of garments of solidarity and camaraderie among the eight of the team's 10 members who qualified for state.
The Lady Tiger Sharks easily captured the team title as the only team over 60 points. They led the field with 79 points to 57.33 points for Melbourne Holy Trinity, the defending state champion. Dade Christian.
Those were the only three teams over 40 points.
This means that Port St. Joe sophomore Kayla Parker beat more than 40 teams by herself.
Parker won the long jump with a leap of 18-feet-10.5, the 100 meter hurdles (14.77) and the 100-meter (12.49) and 200-meter (25.68) dashes, giving the Lady Tiger Sharks 40 points on her own.
"Kayla won the long jump and a few minutes later things just fell into place," Parker said.
Samone Smiley provided another 12 points, winning the shot put (with a winning toss of 37-feet-9.75 feet) while taking seventh in the discus, with a toss of 109-feet-3.
"Kayla and Samone did what they were supposed to do," Parker said. "We expected to get a lot of points from those two and they did the job.
"They set the tempo for the whole team. They are our leaders and they did what leaders are supposed to do, they kept everybody focused, everybody's minds on what they had to do. I was real proud of them."
Despite battling illness, Fanequa Larry was third in the triple jump with a leap of 34 feet and finished fifth behind Kayla Parker in the 200 meters with a time of 26.48.
Larry was also 10th and out of the points in the 400 meters, with Tayler Byrd finishing 12th.
Mariah Johnson also overcame some trouble to provide multiple points.
Despite finishing just behind Kayla Parker in the preliminaries of the 100 meter hurdles, Johnson stumbled over one of the last hurdles in the finals and finished eighth but still adding a point to the team's total.
Coach Parker said Johnson was easily in second before the stumble.
Johnson brushed herself off and took second in the 300 meter hurdles - after being the top qualifier during preliminaries - in a time of 45.48 and anchored the 4x400-meter relay team that finished second in the final event of the night.
"We didn't need the points (from the relay for the championship), but I told them we did," Coach Parker said.
He used two of his alternates, Naomi Warren and Natasha Allen, who joined lead-off runner Byrd and anchor Johnson.
And a bit later in the evening, the Lady Tiger Sharks were climbing to the top of the podium erected in the infield of the track at Winter Park High School and basked in the glow of being pioneers, at least when it comes to girls track in Gulf County.
"We hope that this is not the last one," Coach Parker said, noting that Smiley is the lone senior on the team. "Hopefully there are going to be some more championships. Hopefully we started a tradition for the girls."
Other Local Results
The Port St. Joe High School girls may have enjoyed the most success, but they were not the only county athletes to make their schools proud at Winter Park.
Parker Harris of Port St. Joe High School finished fourth in the pole vault with a vault of 13-feet-6, earning the boys only points at the state meet.
Travis Dailey finished 11th in the shot put for Port St. Joe.
Billy Naylor, a junior at Wewahitchka High School, finished second in the 1,600 meters in 4:28.72 and seventh in the 800 meters for the only points notched by the Wewahitchka boys team.
The Gators' 4x800 relay team of Josh Mitchell, Andrew Bidwell, Colton Price and Geoffrey Manor was 15th.
Kayla Williams, also of Wewahitchka, was 14th in the high jump. Teammate Natalya Miller finished 11th in the 1,600 meters.