Nearly Three Year Wait for Home Field for Boca Ciega Track Team

For more than two years, Boca Ciega High School has been going through some major changes. Additions to the school include new buildings and classrooms, a newly renovated gym and field house and state of the art teaching instruments like Smart Boards. Now finally, the Bogie Pirates track teams have something of their own to cheer about. The old Bogie track that surrounded the outside the Charles C. Beauchamp football field has been replaced; resurfaced  and repainted, with new lane markers and fresh black fencing. For Bogie Girls Head Track Coach Cheryl Greene, it’s like a breath of fresh air. Greene, a Bogie alum and former Track and Field All-American, was extremely excited to be able to run on home turf.

“We’ve had to run on other school’s tracks for almost three years and we always lose that home field advantage. Now we have that extra edge that can push us past a lot of the competition, because now they’re coming to our house.”

The home field advantage seems to be holding; a few of Greene’s athletes are potential State and Regional contenders a well as college scholarship material and she says that it’s so much easier for them to practice when they can walk out from the school and go right onto their own track. Mentally, she says, it seems to prepare them better for competition.

Nate Southern, the Boys track coach, agrees.

“I think it definitely helps out psychologically for our runners to feel comfortable on their own track. They seem to stay sharper and get better workouts.”

Coach Monte Hogue, who coaches Cross Country and also helps Southern with his distance runners, likes that the new track offers distance runners a place to do speed and short distance workouts. They can use the shorter workouts to supplement their longer runs around Gulfport. Wood Ibis Park is also one of their short distances running areas. Driving around Gulfport, if you see a long line of runners, that’s Bogie’s Cross Country runners on a long run.

The Bogie track teams have a lot of new blood this year; Greene says a lot of the kids have never run before or have very little experience. But she sees potential in all of them.

“The new kids won’t really understand what the advantage of a new track is, but the older kids are really happy about it. Before, half of the track would be peeling up. It was dangerous to run on.”

Bogie took full advantage of that home field advantage Thursday afternoon, soundly beating a lean Dixie Hollins team. The teams scored as follows:

Girls BCHS:  95, Dixie 22

Boys BCHS: 106.5 Dixie 28.5

First place finishers were Tyler Suitt 800 run and 4x8 relay,

•  Nicole Copponi -Pole Vault
•  Reaia Thomas - Shot Put & Disc
• Zhania Bryant- Long Jump (14'6") & 4x100
• Chaise Cook-Martin -100 hurdles, 300 hurdles, 4x100 relay and Triple Jump (37'11")
• Iesha Jones 200 meter run and 4x100 relay
• Deshawna Seay 4x100
• Elijah McClendon- Shot Put
• Phadrae White - 4x100 relay & Triple Jump
• Blasie Levai -100 meter run
• Denzel Conyers -100 meters, High Jump, Long Jump
• Darryl Kaeha -Pole Vault
• Anthony Leshore -Hurdles
• Quinn Rudolph- 400 meter run
• Fred Winters - 200 meter run