By RAY BENTON
Leader sports editor
Overall and school records fell as the Cabot Lady Panthers took third place in the Hornet Relays at Bryant on Thursday.
The Lady Hornets finished with 103 points and Lake Hamilton was second with 77. The Cabot girls finished with 74.5. North Little Rock and Little Rock Central rounded out the top five in the girls’ meet.
“We didn’t put everybody in every event they could be in,” said Cabot coach Leon White. “We’re moving people around and trying people in different areas. But we had some really good performances.”
Lexi Weeks again won the pole vault by more than three feet by clearing 13-10, which breaks the state overall record. It’s also currently the best high-school vault in the nation this season. She also won the 400-meter dash with a time of 1:00.79, and was second in the long jump with a leap of 17-10.25. Though the leap was five inches behind North Little Rock’s Malica Monk, it was still good for a school record, breaking the old Cabot record by five inches. Monk also won the triple jump and Tori Weeks took fifth.
Tori Weeks won the 300-meter hurdles with a school record time of 46.44 seconds. She was also third in the hotly-competitive 100-meter hurdles. In the 100-meter hurdles, four runners finished between 15.4 and 15.8 seconds, with Mount St. Mary’s Molly Sampson winning with a time of 15.41.
Tori Weeks also took sixth in the high jump.
Cabot won the girls 4x400 relay with a time of 4:10.41, three-plus seconds ahead of Maumelle’s second-place finish and six seconds ahead of Bryant in third. The time qualified the team that consists of Courtney Briswalter, Tori Weeks, Micah Huckabee and Lexi Weeks for the state meet. The Cabot 4x800 team made up of Samantha Nickell, Emily Dey, Ashley Odom and Ashley Gore finished fifth.
Huckabee won the 1600 by nine seconds with a time of 5:16.32, which is a personal best in that event.
Bryant took first place in both events, with the Hornet boys blowing away the competition with a 61-point margin over second place. The Hornets finished with 133.5 points and Little Rock Central was second with 72.5. North Little Rock’s 67 was good for third. Catholic was fourth with 63 points and Cabot finished with 58 points.
The Sylvan Hills boys also had a few good showings, finishing in 11th place out of 25 teams competing.
Cabot’s Jordan Burke broke the 11-second mark to win the 100-meter dash by three one-hundredths of a second over Central’s Tre James. Cabot’s Layton Alley finished seventh for two points, and Sylvan Hills’ Quincey Flowers earned a point with an eighth-place finish. James reversed the tables on Burke in the 200, winning with a time of 22.18 to beat Burke’s 22.31.
Cabot’s Parker Dey won the 1600 by less than a second over Catholic’s Matt Forte. Dey finished the race in 4:40.97.
Panther Caleb Duerkop placed in the 300-meter hurdles, finishing eighth with a time of 44.94.
The Panthers’ relay sprint team of Layton Alley, Jordan Burke, Jason Shrunk and Logan Melder took fourth in the 4x100-meter relay, just ahead of Sylvan Hills’ fifth-place finish. Central won the event by nearly a second with a time of 42.69. The Cabot 4x800 relay team also took fourth place for five points.
Sylvan Hills’ Tre West won the high jump by clearing 6-feet, 4-inches, two inches higher than Bryant’s Darian Jarrett.
Cabot’s Aaron Henry took second in the shot put with a toss of 46-3, but was five feet behind winner Jeffrey Rogers of Catholic. Henry also took fourth in the discus throw, an event Rogers also won by a large margin. Holdyn Barnes was third in the long jump at 21 feet.
