Polk County’s boys began the state 1A/2A indoor track meet Friday with a state championship. They ended it with another.
And Hanna O’Brien delivered a third title and some history in between.
One of the best days in Polk County track history ended Friday at the JDL Fast Track in Winston-Salem with the Wolverines owning state titles in the boys 4×400-meter relay and 4×800-meter relay, O’Brien becoming the first female in state indoor history to run and win an adaptive event and Polk’s girls and boys teams earning several more podium finishes.
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The indoor meet relay titles are the first in school history and the first state title in any event for the boys program since 2009. O’Brien is the first Polk female to win a state indoor title since 1998.
The Wolverines finished third in the team standings, their 36 points just behind the 39 points of runner-up North Pitt. North Brunswick earned the men’s team title for the second consecutive year, scoring 71.5 points. The Wolverine girls finished ninth as Burlington Cummings won the women’s championship for the sixth time in the last eight years, with 66 points to 55 for runner-up Community School of Davidson.
The boys 4×800-meter relay team of Sean Doyle, Jacob Wolfe, Mitchell Brown and Caleb Brown captured the first title of the day, winning the 4×800 in a time of 8:15.58, setting a new state 2A/1A indoor meet record. West Wilkes placed second, more than 22 seconds behind the Wolverines.
Just prior to that race, the girls team of Emily Kocher, Emma Wagoner, Savannah Robbins and Allison Swope posted a time of 10:28.38 to place second in the 4×800-meter relay, finishing just ahead of Croatan. With standout runner Malia Ellington anchoring the team, Community School of Davidson won the race in a time of 10:09.65.
O’Brien soon took center stage, running the 55-meter adaptive event by herself against the clock. She posted a time of 9.27 seconds, easily beating the time of 9.64 seconds she needed in order to be crowned a state champ, the first female athlete in North Carolina to do so at the state indoor championship.
The day then ended with Doyle, Wolfe, Caleb Brown and Eli Hall winning the boys 4×400-meter relay.
Individually, Doyle and Wolfe finished third and fourth in the 1000-meter run, with Caleb Brown taking fourth in the 500-meter run. Kocher and Swope finished sixth and seventh in the 1000-meter run and Kocher, Swope, Robbins and Addie Lynch placed eighth in the girls 4×400-meter relay.
