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Middle School: Immokalee boys, girls win inaugural titles
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It's not too difficult to see how Immokalee High School has turned into an area track powerhouse.
On Saturday morning at Naples High School, Collier County Middle Schools competed in the first-ever middle school track championship meet. Immokalee's boys and girls each won after finishing the entire season undefeated.
The little Indians put up some big-time stats that even some of their high school counterparts might be envious of.
The biggest came in the throwing events – particularly discus – where Phillip Garcia slung a best throw and county-record 124 feet. Dorothy Pierre followed suit by hurling her best throw -- 81 feet -- also shattering the county record.
"It feels great, and we practice hard and it came out to this great outcome," Garcia said. "It feels special that I was part of winning the 2008 track championship and coach (Esse Sattari) has had us working really hard for something that we really wanted."
The boys finished with a team score of 96 and a 38-point lead over their closest competitor in Manatee Middle, which finished with a total score of 58. East Naples and Corkscrew Middle followed with scores of 39.5 and 35, respectively.
Last week in the North Regional meet at Palmetto Ridge High, the Immokalee girls fended off Oakridge, 102-96. On Saturday, the result was just as close, as the Indians edged the Bulldogs 79-73. Corkscrew (33), Golden Gate (22), and Gulfview (21) were as close as the rest of the opposition came.
The boys' win proved to be decisive, despite having their 4 x 100-meter relay team disqualified for an early handoff.
Sattari was willing to overlook that after seeing how well the team performed in the rest of the events throughout the course of the morning. Between both boys and girls, Immokalee had the most first-place finishers in all of the events with six. Where the Indians really won on both sides, however, was in coming up with all the points from 10 second-place finishes.
"This group of kids has been working hard all season and we have a lot of individuals whose times and distances are almost close to some varsity athletes," Sattari said. "We had one kid that made a mistake and ran out of his lane, but he won the 100-meter, and these are things the kids learn and will remember for the rest of their lives."
Though Immokalee was the class of the meet, many individuals showed that over the course of the season, and they have been working hard to set and break records. On the day, 12 of the records held in the 22 events were broken, many of which by the person who originally set them.
Aside from the new discus marks, Caroline Barlow and company turned heads when she led two of her Oakridge teammates to become three of the first four finishers in the girls' mile. Barlow broke the record she had set prior to the meet of 6:11.18 by nearly six seconds, finishing with a time of 6:05.85.
The encore to that was the performance by Corkscrew eighth-grader Josh Pelletier.
In his mile run, he showed an incredible burst on the home-stretch of the final lap, passing Manatee's Miguel Arroyo and gutting out a time of 5:06.25. The Palmetto Ridge-bound runner held the previous record of 5:18.17.
"It feels good, but it was really hard; I kept thinking I couldn't do it, but I just wanted it so bad," he said. "I usually try to draft behind the first-place runner and then try and get him on the last corner. If he wasn't there I probably wouldn't have beat my own record."
The track championship is part of the first full season of interscholastic athletics in Collier County. Earlier this season, area middle schools participated in championship seasons in volleyball, cross-country, basketball and soccer.
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It was exciting to watch these future superstars. All of these kids had to qualify for this championship so it was special just for anyone to have made it to this event. How sad for them that most parents were not there to share. I was taken by surprise by the lack of parent/family support. 200 students and maybe 15-20 parents.
Congrats to all of you who participated. Keep up the good work.
#1 Posted by flmomx10 on April 27, 2008 at 8:13 a.m. (Suggest removal)
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