ST. CHAMPS: Bulldogs win relay crown

GREENSBORO — Markeon Fletcher handed the baton to Charles Johnson, who had one lap to run to finish the 4x400 relay at the North Carolina High School Athletic Association 2A state championship Friday, and for about the next 50 seconds, couldn’t watch.

“My eyes were closed the whole time, I didn’t know what was going on,” he said.

Johnson reeled in the competition from Salisbury, who led the race, and by the final 50 meters had room to cut to the inside to make a pass. He leaned forward and won by a nose — and the Bulldogs had won the state championship.

“It’s something I’ve never experienced before,” said Theophilus Setzer, who ran the second leg of the victorious relay. “It’s a feeling that I can’t really explain unless you’ve felt it, and it just feels amazing to put all the work in, keep working on the little things and enjoying it, and then coming out on top.”

Quintell McNeill, Setzer, Fletcher and Johnson completed the race in 3 minutes, 23.48 seconds — just 0.03 seconds ahead of Salisbury.

Johnson’s final leg began with the Bulldogs about 10 feet behind the Hornets. But Johnson, who had finished sixth in the 400 meters earlier Friday, was the right man to post the perfect final lap.

“I knew if I got the baton close enough to him, I knew I could make it a good race,” the anchor-leg runner said. “They gave me the inside, so I took it, and I leaned him at the line — I won.”

“I don’t have words for (Johnson’s leg),” St. Pauls coach Charles Johnson said. “But it was calculated, because he calculated it down to a T. He left it all on the track — all of them did.”

The race began for St. Pauls with McNeill, who was running the 4x400 for just the second time this season after doing so at the 2A Mideast Regional, which the Bulldogs also won.

“The game plan was, Salisbury in lane five … I was trying to stay right behind them,” McNeill said.

He then handed the baton to Setzer for the second 400-meter stint.

“I got the baton from Quintell; he got me in a great spot, about even with the top three,” Setzer said. “It was a good handoff and I got out good, had about two or three people in front of me, and I just paced myself in order to get in front of everybody. That last 100 (meters) everybody’s gassed out, I still have some still left in the tank, so that helped us to an extra lead.”

St. Pauls and Salisbury were side-by-side at the 800-meter mark, halfway through the race, as Fletcher began the third leg.

“The dude that was running (for Salisbury), he ran the best race of his life,” Fletcher said. “But I knew that if I could keep it close and get it to Charles, the race was ours.”

That confidence in Johnson was universally felt by the Bulldogs team as they looked on for the final 400 meters.

“As soon as (Johnson) got the baton in his hand, I knew he was going to win,” Setzer said. “There wasn’t even a question in that. That’s just how Charles is; Charles is a competitor, and knowing him, he wanted that more than the other kid did.”

This is the 19th state championship in a track and field event in St. Pauls school history, and the first since Dakota Oxendine won an indoor high jump title in 2018 and the first outdoor title since Tia Glover’s 100-meter dash triumph in 2015. It is the ninth Bulldogs relay team to win a championship, but the first in the 4x400.

“Right now (the community is) extremely excited; they’re blowing up our phones and everybody’s excited,” coach Charles Johnson said. “Everybody was backing them, everybody was pushing them. They carried the community on their shoulders today.”

St. Pauls’ 4x200 team consisted of three of the same runners — Flether, Setzer and Johnson — along with Jakhi Purchell, and finished in ninth at 1:30.81.

Johnson and Fletcher were part of the Bulldogs’ 4x200 team that finished third at last year’s state championships.

Leach takes third in 400 meters

Fairmont coach Edward Squires told Travelius Leach not to run in the 100-meter dash on Friday, with Leach coming off an injury last week at regionals, because he didn’t want to jeopardize Leach’s best chance for a podium finish.

That turned out to be a wise decision.

Leach finished third in the 400-meters, running the race in 48.94 seconds.

“I just tried to run my hardest,” Leach said. “I got out good, tried to hold it and then speed back up once I got out of the curve.”

Cummings’ Jonathan Paylor won the race at 47.98, nearly a second ahead of the field. Northeastern’s Dwan Bell beat Leach by a tenth of a second (48.84) for second place.

“He got out good, and gave it all he had,” Squires said. “He came in third, he ran a great race and I’m proud of him.”

Leach stepped off at the starting line in the 100-meter dash, which he had qualified for at regionals.

Leach finished 12th in the 100 meters at last year’s state championships, and didn’t reach states in the 400 meters. Now after a strong senior season, he’ll continue running track collegiately as he heads to Mount Olive.

“(It’s because of) my coach, and all the hard work he’s been putting me through,” Leach said.

“This year he began to focus more on track,” Squires said. “Last year I would describe it as a deer in the headlights; he didn’t know what he was getting into. This year he ran more focused and he was more determined, he worked harder. … This year’s been a drastic improvement, and it just goes to show you what an athlete can do when they focus on the sport and get determined.”

St. Pauls’ Johnson finished sixth in the 400 meters at 49.96, improving on a ninth-place result in 2023.

Other participants

St. Pauls’ Hope Morgan finished eighth in the high jump and ninth in the long jump. Her best high jump was exactly five feet; in the long jump, she jumped 16 feet, 11.25 inches.

Morgan finished fifth in the high jump and sixth in the long jump at last year’s state championship.

Red Springs’ Monica Washington finished eighth in the shot put and 16th in the discus. Her best throw in the shot put was 33-05.75, while her discus throw was 77-04.

Washington finished 10th in discus and 15th in shot put last year.

Fairmont’s Emanuel Oxendine finished 11th in the 300-meter hurdles with a time of 42.49. He also finished 16th in the 110-meter hurdles at 17.53.

Red Springs’ Julian Evans-Bowen placed 11th in the shot put with a throw of 44-01.

St. Pauls’ 4x100 relay team of McNeill, Jamarcus Smith, Malachi Locklear and Yoshua McBryde finished 14th in 43.98.