STARKVILLE — The pitch to get Lake Spradling to transfer from Starkville Academy to Starkville High School started with Patton Little.
Spradling and Little knew each other outside of their respective schools. Entering the fall of 2015, with Spradling set for his junior year and Little for his senior year, Little made his case to get Spradling to move from the Volunteers to the Yellow Jackets.
Little won.
A little more than a year later, Little had less success on behalf of Southern Mississippi.
After two years of running for Starkville High, one as a teammate of Little’s and this year as a senior while Little is a freshman at USM, Spradling signed a National Letter of Intent with Mississippi State, where he will run cross country and distance events for the track and field team.
“He’s been a wonderful addition to our Yellow Jacket family,” said Steve Griffin, who coaches distance runners for Starkville High. “It’s been awesome to see the progression he’s made over the last year, year and a half.”
Spradling said running with Little in his junior year boosted his development. It’s a dynamic Griffin will miss having in practice.
“It was a great tandem to have, when you show up at a meet and have two of the top runners in the state on the same team,” Griffin said. “Different personalities, but the work ethic was the same. When it was time to work, they pushed each other and got it done.”
In their final event together as Yellow Jackets, last year’s Mississippi High School Athletic Association (MHSAA) Class 6A track and field championships. Little finished third and Spradling finished seventh in the 800. In the 1,600, Little won a state championship while Spradling was nearly 14 seconds behind him in fourth.
This fall in the cross country championships, Spradling ran a time of 16 minutes, 13.3 seconds in the 5-Kilometer course at Choctaw Trails in Clinton to finish second in the state. While training for this spring’s track and field championships, Spradling balanced a recruitment that included MSU and USM, and by extension Little. Ultimately, the presence of an aerospace engineering program at MSU sold him.
Now, Little and Spradling look forward to racing against one another in college.
Griffin said it is hard to project what events Spradling will succeed in as a Bulldog, but he knows he can run any distance event as a “breakneck pace.”
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brett Hudson on Twitter @Brett_Hudson
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