After a season in which Plant City’s Track and Field team boasted 14 district championships, 23 regional qualifiers, and three state qualifiers in both the boys and girls 400 meter relay teams and Kaden Mizell in javelin, the Raiders’ team entered 2023 looking fairly different after a wave of seniors graduated last spring — specifically on the boys’ side.
But despite inexperience, Plant City continues to impress as their boys team finished fourth and their girls team finished fifth in their most recent meet — the George Steinbrenner Invitational.
“When you lose that many seniors and studs, it’s kind of hard to get back to where you were to a degree,” head coach Drew Martucci said. “But from a different standpoint, we’re almost a stronger team this year based on depth in each event — anywhere from distance events all the way to throws right now. We’re adding two pole vaulters that have scored tons of points for us this year and that’s something that we didn’t have last year. When you put all of that together, we were top-four at Steinbrenner out of a 30-team invite and that’s with a couple of injuries. They’ve really exceeded my expectations this year.”
On the boys side, one of the Raiders most impressive performers this season has come in the form of junior Trae’Veon Smith. In his first year on the track team, Smith broke through this past weekend as he won gold in the 100-meters and silver in the 200-meters and set a new Plant City school record with his time of 10.53 seconds in the 100-meters.
“It felt good,” Smith said. “People that I’ve never even seen before were coming up to me and thanking me, it felt good. It even felt totally different when I ran it because the week before I was working on my blocks, I didn’t even really know how to come out of my blocks and power out of them, but I’ve been working on them, I did that and everything felt different… and I still think I can be 10 times better, way better. I know how to come out of my blocks now, I know how to use my power coming out so who knows what the future holds, maybe I can break another record. The goal right now is to break the 200 meter record. I’m not going to overhype myself, I’m ranked third right now in the 100 meter and I’m ok with that, but when the time comes for me to race those other two we’ll see what happens. But my goal now, it’s to break the 200 record.”
Along with Smith, fellow junior Jason Davis notched a top-five finish in the 200 meter. Additionally, Smith, Davis, Alejandro Trejo and Roderick Jackson finished fourth in the 4×100 meter relay, then Smith, Manuel Nava, Jordan Futch and Chase Dexter finished fifth in the 4×400 meter relay. Rounding out the day for the Raiders’ boys, Jordan Futch finished third in the triple jump, Javan Futch finished fourth in discus and 12th in shot put, Ni’jah Drawdy finished 10th in both the discus and shot put, Noah Defrancesco finished sixth in the 800 meters, Eli Dawson finished seventh in the high jump and Christian White finished ninth in the pole vault.
But on the girls side of the team, things are a bit more familiar, highlighted by a 4×100 relay team — composed of Makenzie Holmes, Jalayah Shaw, Makayla Holmes and Erica Holloman — that won districts and qualified for states in 2022 before all returning to Plant City together in 2023. The unit says that they’re more comfortable with each other in their second year running together.
“We all hold each other accountable,” Shaw said. “So it’s like, when we make a mistake we know that we can tell each other, ‘come on, push through it.’ I feel like we’re able to push each other harder to get where we want.”
“I feel like our chemistry as a team has grown stronger,” Holloman continued. “Looking back at last year, since it was our first time together, it doesn’t even compare to this year. This year is totally different, it’s way better.”
This past weekend, the relay team took first place in the 4×100 but has loftier goals for their year as playoffs approach. As state qualifiers in 2022, the goal for 2023 is to have their place on the podium.
“Even though we did well last year, I feel like we can still do better as a team, we still have times that we need to break,” Makayla Holmes said. “We know that we can still do better, so we’re going to push ourselves to our limits.”
On top of the girls’ finish in the 4×100 relay last weekend, Makayla Holmes finished second in the long jump, seventh in the 200 meters and 10th in the 100 meters, Makenzie Holmes finished third in the long jump, fourth in the triple jump and eighth in the 200 meters, Holloman finished fourth in the 200 meters and fifth in the 100 meters and junior Jazlyn Torres took sixth in the discus.
“There’s been a lot of pleasant surprises,” Martucci said. “We didn’t really have those high expectations starting over from scratch on the boys side really, with the exception of four or five returners that scored some points last year, but they’ve really come out of the woodwork. With the girls, those expectations were always there for the season. We’ve had some hiccups along the way, we’re experiencing some injuries that have been nagging, but they’re coming along.”
UPDATE: After the Plant City Observer had gone to press on Wednesday afternoon, Smith proceeded to additionally break Plant City High School’s 200 meter record at the WC Federal Division meet, finishing first with a time of 21.62 seconds.