Vikings Win Two Individual and One Relay Team Championship… Avery High’s Girls Track Team Compiles Runner-Up Overall Finish at State Finals

By Tim Gardner

Avery County High School’s girls track team finished in a tie for second place at the 2024 North Carolina High School Athletic Association’s 1-A Track and Field State Championships, which concluded at the Marcus T. Johnson Track at Truist Stadium on the campus of North Carolina A&T University in Greensboro on May 20.

Swain County won its fourth consecutive girls state championship and its sixth overall. Swain County finished with 94 points.  Avery County and Lejeune tied for the runner-up spot with 41 team points. Wilson Preparatory Academy scored 40 points to finish fourth, one point ahead of Robbinsville, which compiled 39 team points to round out the top five.

Swain County also won its first boys state Track and Field Championship, scoring 81 points, six points ahead of Mountain Island Charter (76). 

Avery County placed 35th overall in the men’s competition.

Avery County’s top finishes included the following two state individual champions and one team state champion: 

*Junior Abby Burleson captured the girls pole vault title with a state record vault over the bar of 11 feet and 3 inches for 10 points.  Burleson’s vault was more than a foot higher than second-place finisher Alden Thomas of Swain County, whose was 10 feet.   Burleson broke the previous state record of 11-0.25 set by Amelia Rogers of Swain County in 2023.

*Junior Maddy Barrett won the girls 300-meter hurdles with a time of 44.11 to score 10 points.  That was more than a second ahead of second-place finisher Amiliana Simmons of Warren County (45.64).

*The 1600-meter (4×400) relay team of junior Brooke Sullivan, senior Lillie Ward, senior Renn Herdklotz, and Barrett won the event with a time of 4:02.25 to score 10 points.

The Vikings’ other team and individual finishes were: 

*The girls 800-meter (4×200) relay team of Herdklotz, sophomore Kaydence Menifee, Barrett, and Lillie Ward finished in third place with a time of 1:45.10 score for 6 points.

*Herdklotz finished fourth in the girls 400-meter dash with a time of 59.429 to score 5 points. She was just a few tenths of a second behind Murphy’s Corrine Cotton (59.427), who finished in third place with 6 points.

*The girls 400-meter (4×100) relay team of Menifee, freshman Lily Flores, Burleson, and Lillie Ward finished in eleventh place with a time of 52:46.

*The boys 3200-meter (4×800) relay team of senior Nicholas Hurtado, sophomore Davis Crenshaw, junior Cain Hart, and junior Kaden Knight finished fifth with a time of 8:42.24 to score 4 points.

The North Carolina High School Athletics Association (NCHSAA) is committed to promoting and highlighting outstanding sportsmanship and has partnered with North Carolina Farm Bureau Insurance to recognize one athlete from each team who has displayed the ideals of sportsmanship throughout its entire season. The 2024 NC Farm Bureau Sportsmanship Award winners for the 1-A Track and Field Championships are Maddy Barrett from Avery County, Meloni Linton of Swain County, Amiya Winston from Lejeune, Josiah Glospie from Swain County, and Grayson Tillotson of Mountain Island Charter.