By By Tim Cottrell
The Escambia Academy Cougar track and field team has had to learn to run like the wind.
In a meet held on a beautiful – but windy – Saturday afternoon, the Cougars hosted Mobile Christian Academy, Cottage Hill Academy, and Edgewood Academy in Canoe.
The Cougar boys and girls teams finished second, which was music to the ears of coach Bert Rice.
"You have to consider we were the smallest school out there," Rice said. "I am very pleased with the effort and hard work the kids are putting in to compete at a level as good or better than these schools. It was a good day. We had a good turnout. We had over 100 kids competing. It was just a good tournament."
Andrea Nall of EA won in three events, the 300-meter hurdles, the mile run, and the long jump. Kaylie Castleberry won the 200-meter run, and Matt Ash won the mile and two mile runs. The girls 4×100-meter relay team, consisting of Katie Smith, Wynne Channell, Morgan Doherty, and Kaylie Castleberry, also won first place.
"Those were all the first-place finishers we had," Rice said. "But we had a lot of second, third, fourth, and fifth-place finishers, so a lot of kids scored points."
Rice felt that running against bigger schools helped his team's chances for the state competition against schools of the same size.
"Tuscaloosa Academy will be coming down for our April 9 meet," Rice said. "I feel like they'll be our biggest competition in state. I'm pleased with where we are now, but we've got a lot of getting better to do. The competition is going to get tougher so for us to have a chance to win a championship we've got to work more and more. We've got a lot of getting better to do, and that's not just coach-speak."
The Cougars will compete in a meet at Northview at 3:00 p.m. Thursday.