Lakewood Ranch’s Falco wins gold in girls 4A long jump

For the second straight year, Sophia Falco will leave the Class 4A championship with at least one gold medal. Now she'll start hunting for more.

Falco opened the weekend at IMG Academy Field with a gold medal in the long jump. The senior leaped 19 feet, 8 1/2 inches during preliminaries and then took the entire final round off. No one could catch her: Lake Minneola’s Javonia Ellis was closest with a jump of 19 feet, 5 1/4 inches.

Falco, who is committed to Vanderbilt, will be in the final of three more events tomorrow. She’ll round out her jumping schedule with the triple jump and then have two cracks as a sprinter. She’ll be the No. 3 seed in the 100-meter dash after running a 12.07-second preliminary time Friday and the No. 3 seed in the 200 dash with a preliminary time of 24.15.

This story was originally published May 5, 2017 at 8:55 PM with the headline "Lakewood Ranch’s Falco wins gold in girls 4A long jump."