Total Team Effort Gives Bulldogs State Title
Doddridge County winning the 4 x 100m relay.
Heading into the state meet Doddridge County and St. Marys was expected to go head-to-head in several pivotal events that would ultimately decide the state championship between the Little Kanawha Conference rivals.
Doddridge lived up to the expectations as they claimed their second team championship in the last three years. Meanwhile, St. Marys fell back to fourth place as Charleston Catholic claimed state runner-up and Williamstown rounded out the top four.
Doddridge won despite not having a single individual champion. However, Doddridge did claim victories in the 4x100-meter relay and Shuttle Hurdles. They also picked up a pair of second place finishes from Daniel Plaugher in 110-meter high hurdles and 300-meter intermediate hurdles.
Plaugher picked up high point honors with 24.50 points edging past Buffalo’s Evan Childers who had 20.75.
Childers claimed the 3200-meter run championship on Friday night by running 9:47.53.
According to Childers, he was patient during the race.
“I wanted to wait until around the mile to make a move,” Childers explained. “I wanted to see how the rest of the field took it out.”
Childers showed major improvement from last year’s state. He ran 10:37 last year in the event. “Our coach made sure we had a good base coming in states,” he said. “
After the 3200, his only focus was on Saturday’s 1600-meter run. “The mileage we’ve run all year has set us up to run multiple large events at the end of the year.”
However, Childers came up short in the 1600, as Richwood’s Andrew Shaffer ran 4:32.78 to defeat the Buffalo junior by two seconds.
Other notable performances in the A boys competition was Gilmer County’s Anthony Aviles breaking the state meet record in the high jump with 6 feet, 5 inches.