MURFREESBORO – One day later the Greeneville boys track team came back to Dean A Hayes Stadium at MTSU and secured the program’s third Class AA State Championship in four years.
“This is the first time we have ever gone back-to-back and it feels great,” Greeneville coach Larry Blalock said. “The seniors on this team have never finished worse than third in the state. That’s huge. It’s big for our program to be here again. We like to be the program that people talk about, and there is no greater feeling than to stand on top of that podium over there.”
The state meet was suspended on Tuesday because of severe thunderstorms around Murfreesboro, and things picked back up on Wednesday afternoon with six running events and one field event left to complete.
The Greene Devils started the day with a comfortable lead, but strong races from Millington Central brought the team score to a 72-72 tie at the close of the running events.
With only the pole vault left Greeneville was guaranteed at least a co-State Championship, but to win it outright Jacob Moore had to get over the bar at least once.
Moore certainly did more than that. He got over the bar at 11 feet to secure the Devils’ team state title. He then cleared 13 feet, which was six inches higher than anyone else in the field. After he locked up his individual state title, Moore broke his own Greeneville High School record with a vault of 14’1”.
With the 10 team points earned from Moore’s win Greeneville finished with 82 points on Wednesday. Alcoa was third with 45 points, and Fairview was fourth with 44.
The team title is Greeneville’s second in a row and third in four years, firmly establishing the Greene Devils as one of the best track programs in the state.
“The end of my career is closer than the beginning, and you want to go out top, but I told them I’ll be back next year,” Blalock said. “We hope to keep this going. It’s a great feeling for me to see the kids keep doing this, and we have some more good ones coming up. So I feel like our program is in an exciting place.”
The only other event Greeneville competed in on Wednesday was the 200 meter dash where Zaydyn Anderson finished in second place. That wrapped up an impressive meet from Anderson who also won state titles in the 100 meters and long jump to go with a third-place finish in the triple jump.
“Zay is kind of the silent leader of this group,” Blalock said. “The kids look to him, and they know if he does his job all they have to do is follow. He did his job this week. If you don’t have a kid like him, these meets can get real tense in a hurry. But as a coach it makes it so much easier to have a guy like him, and we had three of those guys this year.”
