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Middle schoolers shine again

Contributed

Southside Middle School sent three athletes to compete in the Birmingham Middle School Gold Standard Meet on Thursday which is basically the state's version of a middle school championship. The term "gold standard" means that each athlete had to post better than a certain time or distance during a previous meet in their event in order to participate in this year-ending contest, the "best of the best" if you will. 

The SMS girls' team consisted of two athletes, seventh graders Chloe Baynes and Belle Haynes. Baynes won gold in the high jump with a new school record of 4'10 bettering her old record of 4'6.  Baynes also competed in the 60m hurdles finishing fourth and narrowly missing the bronze medal by .03 seconds.  Her time was also a school record 10.62.

Next, Belle Haynes won silver in the long jump with a new school indoor record of 15'2 bettering her old indoor record of 14'9.  Haynes then competed in the 60m dash finishing 24 overall running 8.9 tying her previous record. 

The boys team carried one member, seventh grader Woodrow Dean. Dean ran one event, the 800m where he finished with an impressive seventh place time of 2:22.91 bettering his original time by more than 11 seconds.

Dean
Baynes
Haynes

Coach Danny Worley couldn't be more proud of how well his three runners performed.

"I was impressed by how all three kids had personal records (PR's) in all their events. They work hard at practice, want to do well and are very competitive," he said. "They competed against athletes from the largest schools in the state and beat most of them as seventh graders. That's impressive! The girls finished in 6th place as a team and only had two members. That's great!"

Baynes and Haynes will transition in to softball and Dean will continue running in outdoor track which officially starts on Feb. 13. 

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