By Erik Harris
The Hewitt-Trussville boys track and field team went down to Mickey Miller Blackwell Stadium in Gulf Shores last week and came away with a third-place finish.
Hoover won the AHSAA Class 7A state meet with 131.33 overall points, 9.83 points better than second-place Auburn. The No. 3 Huskies scored 54 tournament points to hold off fourth-place James Clements with a total of 45.50.
Hewitt-Trussville head coach David Dobbs pointed to team depth as the reason for gap between his guys and the top two finishers.
“They’re just deeper, they’re older, they’ve got more guys to choose from,” said Dobbs. “It’s just simply a numbers game. If we could put just my No. 1 guy against their No. 1 guy, we could go head-to-head with them and we would win five out of ten meets.”
Dobbs went on to mention that the separation happens when his No. 2 and 3 competitors face Hoover and Auburn’s No. 2 and 3 guys.
“Where our No. 2 and No. 3 guys get seventh and eighth place points, their No. 2 and No. 3 guys get the fourth a fifth place points,” he said.
Jaison Williams brought home the gold with a discus throw of 46.99 meters. He also performed well in the shot put event, finishing fifth with a distance of 14.98 meters. Along with Williams’ production, the Huskies finished in the top five of nine different events.
One of those nine came via team effort. Hewitt-Trussville stopped the clock at 3:23.78 to finish third in the 4×400-meter relay. The combination of Austin Norwood, Trevian Jenkins, Nick Campbell and JaRon Godbolt pulled through for the bronze finish.
“And that was a hard-fought battle,” said Dobbs. “Three of us battled down to the wire the last 20 meters, so it was a good battle.”
Noah Igbinoghene, Andy Chappell, Benjamin Knox and John Ngaruiya all captured top five finishes for the Huskies.
Igbinoghene went for a fourth-place finish in the long jump and two fifth-place finishes in the triple jump and 500-meter dash.
Chappell placed fifth in the pole vault. Knox and Ngaruiya also passed fifth in the 3,200 and 1,600-meter runs, respectively.
With only four departing seniors to replace, Dobbs feels good about the future of his program. Godbolt, Campbell, Jenkins and Norwood are the four soon-to-be graduates.
“We’re very young, we only graduate four seniors, so the future looks really, really bright for us,” said Dobbs. “I’m really excited about next year.”