The William Byrd High School and middle school track teams will be competing in the 52nd Annual Haley Toyota Cosmopolitan Invitational Track and Field Meet this weekend. The meet will be held at William Fleming High School on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, May 4, 5 and 6.
The track meet, which is officially sanctioned by the Virginia High School League, has become the largest scholastic track meet in Southwest Virginia with boys’ and girls’ teams participating from Middle, Junior and Senior High Schools throughout our area. Cosmo 2017 will include athletes from 40 area schools this year with a total expected participation of over 1,800 students.
The Meet is in its sixth year back where it began. The First Annual Cosmopolitan Invitational Track & Field Meet was held on Saturday, May 7, 1966 at William Fleming High School. There were four schools in the field: Addison High School, Jefferson High School, Patrick Henry High School and William Fleming High School. The Meet attracted 115 boys for 15 events and was won by William Fleming.
The Cosmopolitan Club of Roanoke will award $3,000 scholarships to an outstanding senior boy and girl participating in this year’s meet. Including this year’s scholarships, the Club has awarded over $72,000 in scholarships since 2000.
Cosmo 2017 gets underway at 3 pm Thursday afternoon with Middle School track & field events. Junior and Senior Division track and field events will be held at William Fleming on Friday afternoon beginning at 3 pm. Competition resumes at 9 am Saturday morning at Fleming when the Senior field events begin. Track events finals for Middle Schools and Junior and Senior Divisions will begin at 11:30 am.
The Parade of Athletes marches at 11:00 am Saturday, followed by running events for all scholastic divisions. Closing Award Ceremonies are expected to conclude by 6:30 pm on Saturday.
Admission is $5 for adults and $2 for students. There is no charge for preschoolers and parking is free.
Last weekend the Terriers ran in the Blacksburg Invitational at Blacksburg High School. The host Bruins won the both the boys’ and girls’ team titles out of 16 schools competing, with Byrd’s boys taking ninth and the girls finishing 12th.
For the boys, Hunter Board placed fourth in the 200 meters with a personal record(PR) time of 23.58. Jackson Honaker placed fourth in the 400 with a time of 52.87, which was also PR.
Westin Recktenwald finished fifth in a strong field in the 1,600 meters with a PR 4:37.01, improving his previous best by nine seconds. Greyson Cornett placed fifth in the 110 hurdles and the 4×800 team of Ashton Ashley, Conner Lynch, Recktenwald and Ryan Moore took third.
For the girls, Kayland Bond placed fifth in the 400m with a PR by 3.5 seconds. Savannah Gheen placed sixth in 100m and Erin Wienke finished sixth in the 1600m.
Byrd’s top performer was Ellasen Spangler, who took a day off from softball to finish second in the shot put with a heave of 35’10.50”.
“She is closing in on the school record of 36-6,” said Byrd coach Eric Royal. “The record belongs to Audra Sams from 1987.”