Newton Citizen

COVINGTON - The Alcovy boys track team made good use of its home track advantage in the Region 4-AAAA meet, earning four individual state meet berths during the event held Friday and Saturday at Alcovy High School.

Jamal Toney, Jameel Abdul-Mateen, Gary Wilkins and DJ Hawkins all advanced to the state meet in Jefferson from May 7 to 9 with second-place finishes in the region meet.

Toney finished with second in the discus with a toss of 130 feet, 7 inches to wrap up his state berth. He just missed a trip to the state meet in the shot put, finishing third at 44 feet.

Abdul-Mateen placed second in the long jump with an effort of 21 feet, 10 inches. He also finished sixth in the 100-meter dash at 11.37 seconds.

Wilkins took second in the high jump at six feet, just two inches behind the region champion, Griffin's Greg Worthy.

Hawkins narrowly missed a region championship in the 800-meter run. His time of 2 minutes, 1.83 seconds was less than a second behind Stockbridge's Aaron Coleman, who won at 2:01.25. Alcovy's Damontae Ivey finished third in the race at 2:04.95.

Brandon Thomas had two near-misses for the Tigers in the hurdles. He finished third in 110-meter high hurdles (15.57 seconds) and third in the 300-meter intermediate hurdles (40.66).

Other strong performances for the Tigers included a pair of fourths by Joshua Holcombe in the 1,600-meter run (4:57.23) and the 3,200-meter run (10:58.16).

Kenny Stokes took fourth in the long jump (21-3) and placed fifth in the triple jump (42-11).

Demetri Sawyer was fourth in the 300 hurdles (42.38).

Alcovy's relay teams finished fourth in the both the 400 (43.11) and the 1,600 (3:32.89).

Ahmad Crawford also was fourth in the pole vault (9-6).

Overall, Alcovy finished second as team with 110.5 points, beating third-place Stockbridge by 2.5 points. Griffin won the the region championship with 131 points. Dutchtown (75.5) and Mount Zion-Jonesboro (62) rounded out the top five.

The Region 4-AAAA girls meet will be held Friday at Saturday at Alcovy.