By Andy Warrener
Following an offseason fueled by disappointment, Wharton junior hurdler Aria Tate is ready to shine.
The budding star, already off to a great start in the track and field season, is looking ahead to a breakout season. She came close last year, almost capturing a state title in the 200 meters as a sophomore. But, in the time it practically takes Tate to blink her eyes, her shot at gold slipped away, as she finished second by .08 seconds.
This year, Tate will focus on her specialty — the 100- and 300-meter hurdles, an event she routinely wins in Hillsborough County and one in which her father, Heanon, thinks she can be a star when she gets to college.
Heanon, after all, would know. A pastor at Force of Life International in Tampa Palms, Heanon was a star running back at Gaffney High School in South Carolina before running the sprints and hurdles at South Carolina State.
Heanon’s son, Auden, was a star wide receiver for Wharton, and is now at Florida State.
He sees his daughter as having the same athletic potential.
“I think she could excel at the next level in the 400m hurdles,” Heanon said.
Tate will be one to watch today at the third annual Wharton Wildcat Invitational. Field events begin at 8:20 a.m., and the running finals start at 4:30 p.m. (or 45 minutes after the completion of prelims).
Heanon, who has volunteered with the track team since his family moved here from South Carolina four years ago, is a first-year full-time assistant coach under Wharton track coach Anthony Triana. The former college star helps out with all of the sprinters and hurdlers — his specialty — but he will keep a close eye on Aria.
Tate is fast becoming a top-flight hurdler. She was sixth at the state meet in the 100m hurdles last season as a sophomore, and just ran the 55-meter hurdles in 8.37 seconds at the Jimmy Carnes Invitational indoor meet in Gainesville in March. That was good enough for third-place in the 17-19 age group, behind Dunedin’s Olivia Welsh, who was third last year at the Class 2A State Championship, and Royal Palm Beach’s Faith Lee.
For Tate, who usually starts slow and relies on her strong finishes to win races, her 8.37 was an encouraging number for a shorter event, evidence she improved last offseason on her initial burst out of the blocks. Her best time in the 100 hurdles is 14.49, but that won’t be enough to win states.
What will help, however, will be Triana’s plan to give her some more rest in between events. Highly versatile and able to run 5-6 different races, last year’s meet schedule during the postseason could be grueling. Last season, Tate focused on the 100 hurdles and the 100 dash. Those events are practically back-to-back at a track meet, with only a brief respite, thanks to the boys 110-meter hurdles in between.
“I think my times would have been better if I would have had more time to rest (in between events),” Tate said. “You try to rest (in between the 100m hurdles and the 100m dash) but there’s just not that much time, you have to get back to the line for the race.”
The 100 and 330 hurdles, however, are separated by enough events that Tate will be fresh for both.
Tate’s excellence in the hurdles will make the Wharton girls track & field team even more dangerous this season. Along with fellow juniors Avonti Holt and Searra Woods, the trio have many of the sprinting events covered, and they also run on a 4×400 relay (seventh at state last year) together that should challenge the school record. Holt and Woods were both also on the 4x800m relay that took third at the state meet.
“Those three have been leaders on this team for the last three years and they each excel in their own way,” Triana says. “If we didn’t have any one of the three of them, it’d be a different team.”
The Wildcats opened their track season at the Wharton Quad Meet, running against Freedom, Wiregrass Ranch and Bloomingdale. Tate only competed in the 400-meter dash (which is expected to help her build endurance for the hurdles races in the bigger, more important meets) and finished a few seconds behind her teammate Woods. Wharton won 10 of the 16 events.
“The biggest key with our team is the versatility of those three,” Triana said. “These three can go up and cover eight events between them.”
Boys Not Too Shabby, Either
The Wharton boys may not have the star power the girls do, but they had a solid quad meet as well.
Sophomore Noah Damjanovic won the 1600- and 3200-meter runs (in 4:51.33 and 10:19.97, respectively), sophomores Sahil Deschenes and Dennarius Murphy finished 1-2 in the 800, and junior Desmond Williams ran a 45.71 to win the 300m hurdles.
The Freedom track and field program is re-building in 2016, with head coach Lyn Gross taking over both the boys and girls squads. Gross has been the boys coach for the last five years and takes over the full team with assistant Miranda Calloway. Gross, a two-time state champion as a member of the 4×100 relay team for Suwannee High School, says he has between 50 and 60 athletes out for the start of track season.
Returners Isiah Smith, Christian Simmons, Trent Burnett and Richard Lush will be looked to help try and keep pace with their New Tampa rivals at Wharton.
Smith captured the 200 at the Wharton Quad Meet, winning in 23.21 seconds, and Xaiver Hardy (with a jump of 5 feet, 10 inches) and Demetrius Jones (5’-6”) finished 1-2 in the high jump for the top individual Patriot finishes, while the 4×100 and 4×400 relays teams also posted wins.
The Patriot boys could see some reinforcements now that the basketball team’s season ended with a loss to Bartow in the regional semifinals on Feb. 16. Gross said that he will most likely get Freedom hoops star Nasir Core out for the track team, particularly in the jumps, to help bolster the lineup.
On the girls side, Rachel Chapper will handle the jumps, and she specializes in the high jump. The junior was the only Patriot girl to win an event at the quad meet, jumping 4’-10” to win the high jump.
Sophomore middle distance runner Dana Elkalazani, who was part of Freedom’s state-qualifying 4×400 relay last season, was second in the 1600 (in a time of 5:43.58) and third in the 800 (2:32.46) at the Wharton quad meet.
