IMG Academy, Manatee win team titles at county track meet

The 100-meter dash is one of the events that brings the biggest rise out of a crowd at a track and field meet, and as the competitors in the final, fastest, heat of the boys’ 100 set up in the starting blocks all attention shifted to the southeast corner of Moore Athletic Complex at Turner Fields.

The eight quickest sprinters in Manatee County took off from their blocks at the county championship. With 50 meters gone, Rikkoi Brathwaite had separated himself from the pack. For the past year, Brathwaite, a senior from the British Virgin Islands, has run in the blue and white of IMG Academy, and he has become perhaps the fastest sprinter the high school program has ever had.

It was, as one opposing coach put it Tuesday, the best of the county and some of the best in the world.

“The word’s starting to get out,” said Loren Seagrave, the director of IMG’s track and field program. “A couple international people joined us this year. One from California. One from Washington. It’s getting out.”

The Ascenders have spent the past few seasons building a high school track and field program to rival the success of some of the academy’s other powerhouses. Last season marked the first time IMG had a significant roster with about 19 or 20 athletes and about a dozen who competed at the 2016 county championships.

Back at Moore Athletic Complex at Turner Fields for the second straight year, the Ascenders, who now field a roster of 32 athletes, hoisted their first county championship trophy. IMG’s girls scored 183 1/2 points to beat Lakewood Ranch (120) and Manatee (111) at Saint Stephen’s Episcopal School. The Ascender boys finished fifth with 63 1/2 points, while the Hurricanes claimed the county title with 193 points. The Mustangs finished second with 145 and Palmetto took third with 88 points.

For IMG, the county meet is the closest it can get to a traditional high school postseason. The Ascenders are a Florida High School Athletic Association independent and can’t take part in the state postseason. While IMG Academy was playing host to the state championship meet last year, the Ascenders were competing at a meet in Puerto Rico.

“We can still compete as a high school,” Seagrave said, “until the weekend of the state meet.”

So until that weekend, IMG will try to act like a high school team. The ultimate goal is to get its athletes to elite college programs and their runs, jumps and throws during the season they hope will get their best athletes to New Balance Nationals — the Ascenders already have three girls relays and two boys relays with qualifying times.

The rest of the meet was dominated by most of the area’s familiar powers. The Hurricanes’ boys, led by a defending state champion 400 relay team, won four individual titles.

Seth Walter, a state-title hopeful in the shot put, produced a 17-meter effort to win the title. Joshua Betts and Elijah Wichers won the 110 hurdles and triple jump, respectively. The 400, which includes four new members, finished in 42.21 seconds, putting it roughly half a second off the time last year’s relay team ran at the county championship. The 41.89 it ran during preliminaries, though, would have put the team only a tenth of a second back.

“They’re working hard. Still some things that we can fine tune,” Hurricanes head coach Mike Smith said. “Hopefully, whenever we get down to the state championship, they’ll be there again. It all comes down to how much work they want to put in and just realize that the opportunity is there.”

This story was originally published April 4, 2017 at 10:30 PM with the headline "IMG Academy, Manatee win team titles at county track meet."