Fort Mill Edges Westwood To Take Div. II AAAAA Boys Track Title; Fort Mill Girls Take Girls Track Title
Fort Mill boy track team.
By WORTHY EVANS
HSSR Contributing Writer
Columbia--With only the pole vault competition left in the Div. II AAAAA state track and field meet at Richland Northeast High School on May 16, the Westwood boys team held a 94-88 advantage over Fort Mill in the point totals.
The Fort Mill girls’ team, with 73.2 points, had already been announced the winners of the girl’s half of the meet. Meanwhile, as first-place North Myrtle Beach pole-vaulter Kempf Dylan tried to break the state-record vault of 16 feet, 9 inches, Westwood and Fort Mill waited in the infield for the final score.
Dylan missed out on breaking the record, but when the officials in the score tent finished entering the results, Fort Mill vaulters Jack Allen, a sophomore, and junior Padyn Gossett-McDowell were tied for fifth place—and earned 3.5 points each.
Those seven points handed the state championship to Fort Mill, which won 95-94 over Westwood.
“I knew before we even came here that pole vault was going to be critical because we had three in that event and Westwood didn’t have any that qualified,” said Fort Mill head coach Lee Whitaker. “That was a big point swing for us. Everything else is going to be back and forth, and that’s what it came down to.”
Westwood head coach Rod Lorick said that while the Redhawks team is filled with sprinters, the team works hard at filling out distance running spots and field events. Pole vaulting, he added, can be hard to get young people interested in trying.
“It’s hit or miss every year,” Lorick said. “Some kids are scared to do it. We try to fill every field event that we can.”
Rather than dwell excessively on the results of one field event, Lorick noted that while the sprinters won gold in several events, he was missing a top sprinter in junior Jamie Patterson, who was injured before the meet. Lorick said Patterson could have made a difference in the 100 and 200 meters.
The boy’s win was the fourth for Whitaker-coached teams in the 2025-2026 school year He also coached the boys’ and girls’ cross-country teams to win last fall.
“We knew before we got here how close it was going to be,” Whitaker said. “Westwood is built differently from us, and we knew they were going to score a lot of points in certain events, and I knew we were going to score a lot of points in certain events.”
The pole-vault finishes were the last scores to come in, but what set up the victory was the team’s bread and butter, distance running. With victories and placings in the individual and relay distance runs, the Yellow Jackets piled up 63 points and three gold medals.
Sophomore Wyatt Gremillion, one of the cross-country runners who won gold last year, placed first in the 800 runs with a time of 1:53.64, two seconds ahead of sophomore Quinton O’Toole, who placed second and gave the team 18 points in the event.
“I feel really happy but not satisfied,” Gremillion said about his effort. “I think today is a big steppingstone for the future. This team means a lot to me. All these guys are so supportive. I love my coaches; they’ve helped me so much in my track career.”
Another cross-country runner, senior Connor Demmerle, won the 1600 run with a time of 4:17.49. Behind him was sophomore Owen Ware in second place, junior Hudson Haley in fourth, and senior Finn Leckrone in sixth. Those placings earned the Yellow Jackets another 26 points.
The 4x800 teams of Leckrone, O’Toole, Gremillion, and Demmerle took first with a time of 7:53.73.
Haley, Ware, and Leckrone also ran the 3200 run, placing fifth, sixth, and seventh, respectively, for nine points.
Senior sprinter Jahzir McCants contributed eight points to Fort Mill’s total with an eighth-place finish in the 100-meter dash, a fifth-place spot in the 200 dash, and he finished sixth in the 400 dash. Junior Tristan Amico finished seventh in the 400.
In field events, junior Josh Moore took sixth in the triple jump, and junior Smith Stapleton took seventh in the shot put as well as in the discus throw.
Fort Mill’s 4x400 team of Grant Dubak, Gremillion, Amico, and McCants went neck-and-neck with Westwood’s team of Myles Bryant, Patterson’s replacement, Justin Washington, and Jayden Wilson in the final track event of the afternoon. The Redhawks held on to win the event with a time of 3:20.52, but the Yellow Jackets came in a close second—11 hundredths of a second—to set up the wait for the scores in the pole vault.
Whitaker also talked about how close the 4x400 race was between second and third place. The Yellow Jackets’ margin between first and second place was a hair over a 10th of a second, but the Indian Land team of Braden Ledford, Christian Davis, Ryan Foster and Tavian Daniels was within thousandths of a second of flipping the placing—Fort Mill’s time of 3.20.621 was five thousands of a second faster than Indian Land’s time of 3.20.626.
“That flips everything right there, if we end up third and not second there,” Whitaker said. “Track at this level comes down to stuff like that.”
Other than the Redhawks’ 4x800 team of sophomore Kameron Moore, sophomore Aiden Adkins, junior Bobby Singleton, and senior Bobby Quick taking second place behind Fort Mill with a time of 8:02.33, Westwood had no point placings in the distance runs.
Instead, Westwood dominated the sprints, getting 58 points in the 100, 200, and 400 dashes, and the 110 hurdles alone.
Junior Jayden Wilson took gold in both the 100 and 200, with times of 10.59 in the100 and 21.53 in the 200. Behind Wilson in the 100 was junior Myles Bryant in second place. Senior Jayden Boyd took third in the 200 and Bryant took fourth.
Boyd won the 400 dash with a time of 48.13, and senior Justin Washington finished fourth.
Junior Kehinde Howard placed fourth in the 110 hurdles.
The 4x100 team of Wilson, Bryant, Patterson’s replacement, and Boyd added another 10 points with a first-place finishing time of 41.46.
In field events senior Leon Morgan placed eighth in the long jump. Senior Kyzer Hannah placed eighth in the shot put and senior Jeremiah Whitmore placed third in the discus.
Lorick said that with all of the events the Redhawks won or placed in complete, falling one point short of winning state in spite of the gold medals and high finishes can hurt the kids—but it can also motivate the team to work harder and smarter over the next year.
“It’s a disappointment we came in second, we worked hard, we deserved it, but we go back to the drawing board,” he said. “With all we did this year, it wasn’t without a reason. I’ve got a lot of juniors coming back, a lot of guys who ran the 100 and 200 are juniors, so we’ve got something to look forward to next year.”
The Fort Mill girls, also coached by Whitaker, clinched their state title earlier in the afternoon with 73.2 points, 8.2 points more than runner-up West Florence.
“This is a total team effort,” Whitaker said. “We got a lot of points from our throws, our vaulters had a strong day, our distance runners had a strong day. I can’t express enough about the total team effort. We got points from every single discipline.”
Senior Mia Williams took gold in the 100 and 200 dashes, coming in at 11.75 seconds in the 100 and 24.97 seconds in the 200. Williams also won the triple jump with an effort of 11.80 meters and placed second in the long jump with a 5.51-meter effort.
“I started jumping a little bit my freshman year. In middle school I only did sprints, but my coach in my freshman year wanted me to branch out.” Williams said about putting in the work in different events.
The 4x800 team of freshman Lauren Allen, junior Mia Zook, junior Kaylee Rovenstine, and senior Marlee Cook won gold with a time of 9:28.51.
What clinched the event for the Yellow Jackets were high placers in several events. Besides Williams’ second-place spot in the long jump, Allen finished second in the 1600 run. Rovenstine placed seventh in the 800.
In field events, sophomore Addison Feinour took second in the discus and Senior Kate Marker placed fourth in the shot put.
Four Fort Mill athletes placed in the pole vault earned the team 8.2 points. Freshman Ryan Marsh placed fifth in the event, senior Cambell Cahaly placed sixth, and juniors Adriana Lackey and Lucy St. Cressman tied for seventh place, earning them 0.6 points apiece.
With the 2026 cross country and track and field year in the books, Whitaker said he looks to the runners, throwers, jumpers, and vaulters, along with the school, the assistant coaches, and the community to determine the course of the Yellow Jackets’ future success.
“I’ve been fortunate for sure. I have fantastic kids who worked hard year in and year out, they give 100 percent,” Whitaker said. “They show up for practice, they show up in the weight room, they do everything we ask them do.”
