Temple Athletes Punch Their Tickets to the State Meet

It wasn’t the perfect day like Friday but in the end it was a banner day for the Wildcat Track & Field team as two more relay teams and Quintin Smith punched their tickets to the Class 5A State Track & Field Championships that will be held at Mike Myers Stadium in Austin on May 12-14.

At the UIL 5A Regional Track & Field Championships at Sam Houston State University on Saturday, April 30, the 4×200 and 4×400 relay teams posted their best times of the season to advance to the state meet while Quintin Smith won the 110 hurdles to join Friday’s long jump champion Dylan McGee as individual participants in the championships.

Quintin Smith would be the only one on Saturday to take first place in his event by winning the 110 hurdles in a time of 14.17 and advance to the state meet. Smith eased past Fabian McCall of Huntsville who ran a 14.44 for second place.

The 4×200 relay team of Jemiyah Franklin, Willari Watson, Issac Cole and Davion Curtis trimmed almost two seconds off their prelim time to run a 1:24.98 and take second place en route to earning a trip to the state meet. Curtis was narrowly edged out by Fort Bend Marshall who won the event at 1:24.56.

The day was capped as the 4×400 relay team of Willari Watson, Jemiyah Franklin, Carlos Borbon and Xavier Johnson ran a season best 3:15.15 to punch their ticket to the state meet and take second place. Temple came into the event with the fifth best qualifying time and edged out Richmond George Ranch by 0.03 of a second for the state berth. Ft. Bend Marshall won the event in 3:14.76.

The Wildcats also took second place in the team standings with 68 points as Ft.Bend Marshall was the regional champion with 98.

Click here to view the complete results from the Regional Meet