On March 29th, Saint Stephen’s track athletes headed to the New Balance-sponsored track event, The Archer Invitational, at Archer High School in Georgia.

This meet is very well-known in the running industry. Teams from the surrounding states come to compete in front of college scouts, an opportunity that for many is brand new.

The entries for the meet were so large that the prelims were held on March 29th and the finals were on the next day, March 30th.

The farthest the SSES team has traveled was to the state tournament in Tallahassee, but this year, Head Coach A.J. Brown and Assistant Coach Shameka Burdick wanted to expose the runners to competition outside of these boundaries.

“The Archer meet was listed as a sponsored event from the world’s major sport manufacturer, New Balance,” Burdick said.  “In my mind, that brings robust competition, plus our athletes becoming higher education prospects in Track & Field.”

The coaching staff provided this opportunity to select track athletes willing to take their running to the next level. The competition gave them a taste of what others are running outside of our state and what times they need to work up to if they want to run at the collegiate level.

All the invited runners had to meet the time requirements to compete.

“I think it’s a good idea to give our athletes the experience of running against other schools, not just in our state,” Coach Brown said.  “It gives them a challenge to compete.” 

Sophomore Keymani Dillingham was one of the selected athletes at the invitational.  She had high hopes that all the athletes would do their absolute best. Dillingham hoped to run against some faster athletes than the ones here in Florida, so she would have a chance to PR.

“I was very excited because we don’t have that big of competition around here for girls, so going up there to compete with them was really cool,” Dillingham said.

Dillingham said the event was a wake up call for the athletes to understand the competition they are up against.