Sports
UPCOMING EVENTS
06
23 2021
GRAL Swimming: Atlee at Ashland 6:00 p.m.
06
23 2021
GRAL Swimming: AshCreek at Rockville 6:00 p.m.
| Youth, High School, College, Recreational & Professional
Foreman’s solo almost wins title for Atlee By Dave Lawrence Sports Editor MECHANICSVILLE – If Atlee junior Jada Foreman could have run the 4x400-meter relay all by herself Friday, she might have won the Virginia High School League Class 5 state outdoor track and field championship . . . all by herself. As it was, Midlothian’s girls needed to finish at least sixth in the 4x400, the final event of the day, to edge Foreman’s 43 points. The Trojans finished sixth, edging Foreman by a point to win the state team title in the 2021 championships held at Todd Stadium in Newport News. Foreman scored in all six events she competed in, winning the girls triple jump, finishing second in the high jump, long jump and 200 dash, fourth in the 100 hurdles and fifth in the 300 hurdles. She did all that in one day – in a compressed schedule that, at the longest, allowed her no more than an hour of rest and leaving her little time to appreciate her achievement. “Everything happened really fast,” Foreman said Sunday. “So it really hasn’t sunk in, the fact that like that it all happened.” Not many did at the time. Because of processing issues, few knew how the team scoring stacked up. Foreman’s coach, Neil Mathews, and his staff resorted to the old-fashioned way of figuring it out – adding the results up by hand. The old-fashioned math had him prepared for the 4x400, the final
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event of the day, and he knew what Midlothian’s girls needed to do to beat Foreman. Mathews surprised Trojan head coach Stan Morgan when he walked up to congratulate the Trojans on their state title. “They were, like, ‘Why is he coming around congratulating us? We had a good race, but it wasn’t like we won,’ ” Mathews said. Soon the event announcer confirmed the news: Midlothian’s girls in first place with 44 points. Jada Foreman – er, Atlee – in second with 43. Foreman wasn’t the first to nearly pull off a state team championship all by herself, but it hasn’t happened often and hasn’t happened in such a timecompressed fashion. “I would say it’s one of the historically best performances I’ve ever seen,” said Nolan Jez, senior editor of Virginia Milesplit. He and a few “old-timers” including Mathews and former national coach of the year Eddie Williams of Bethel and Grafton’s Jim McGrath talked afterwards trying to figure out who had pulled off a similar feat as Foreman. The list is short. One was another athlete coached by Mathews, Rachel Butler at what was then Lee-Davis High School in 2007. Grant Holloway, a world champion hurdler from Grassfield, is another. One has to go further back in time to fill out the list: Felicia Majors Mary Ann Magnant for The Local of South County and Doug Atlee’s Jada Foreman won the girls triple jump in the Virginia High School League Class 5 Championships at Todd Stadium in
The Mechanicsville Local
see SOLO, pg. 19
June 23, 2021
Newport News Friday with a 39 feet, 7 inch effort. The only representative of the Raider girls present, she scored all of Atlee’s 43 points to bring them to just one point shy of the team title behind girls team champion Midlothian.
