CALEDONIA — Alexis Pace has learned how to set the pace.
Starting as a middle schooler, Pace watched the older competitors on the Caledonia High School cross country and track and field teams.
As she approaches the last meets of her prep career, she can look at all of the younger student-athletes on this year’s Caledonia High girls track and field team and remember what she was capable of doing at that age. All of the seventh-graders don’t make Pace feel old. They give her confidence that the Caledonia High girls program will be in good hands when she leaves at the end of this school year.
“I am really impressed with their performances,” Pace said. “We have never had this many seventh-graders or middle schoolers move on to North Half. It is a pretty big deal.”
On Saturday, Pace again will set the tone for Caledonia when its girls and boys teams compete at the Mississippi High School Activities Association Class 4A North Half meet at Tishomingo.
For Pace, who won the 3,200 meters (13 minutes, 50 seconds) and finished second in the 1,600 (6:21) at the Region 2 meet on April 22 at Kosciusko, it will be her final time to qualify for the state meet. With a college scholarship offer to Blue Mountain
College already signed, Pace hopes to close her career with two more solid meets so she can bring home a few more medals.
“I am a little bit nervous about it, but, for the most part, I am ready to run and see where I stand,” Pace said.
Pace is the team’s only qualifier who isn’t a seventh-grader. CeCe Devos won the pole vault at the region meet with a mark of 7 feet, 6 inches. Ella Clark qualified in the 3,200 (third) and 1,600 (fourth). Dominique Hodges finished second in the 800. The 4×800 team of Hodges, Gracie Hollis, Jade Hall, and Libby McMurphy also will compete.
Caledonia High girls track and field coach James Reed said he has tried to recruit as many cross country and track and field athletes as possible throughout the years. He said it is imperative to get runners as young as possible so coaches can start to train them and to get them to understand the workload they need to shoulder to be among the best in the state. He said the middle schoolers on this year’s team have shown the desire to work, to learn, and to get better.
“I have got some really good young ones,” Reed said. “I told them when we started, if you work hard, you can obtain a lot of credit, but you have to work, and they have worked pretty hard.”
Reed said all of the seventh-graders average under three minutes for their leg of the 4×800. He said all of the young runners are learning how to compete, which is an adjustment when you have to compete against juniors and seniors. He said a few of them have surprised him, but he said they “feed off each other,” which explains why they have done so well.
On the boys side, Matt Watson, a freshman, will try to build on his wins in the 800 and in the 1,600 at the Region 2 meet.
“I think I have a small chance of doing good and maybe getting first or second,” Watson said. “But I think I will get in the top four for sure and move on to the state meet. Last year, I made it to North Half and got beat out, and I was pretty disappointed. This year, that is my main goal, to get to the state meet.”
Pole vaulter Nolan Blakney, a freshman, sophomores Jelani and Jakari Thompson and senior Ryan Denny, who is in his first year on the team, and junior David Young (3,200) will join Watson at the North Half meet.
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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