COVINGTON, Ga.— When Newton boys track and field coach Kevin Barnes thinks back to the start of the 2016 season, he remembers he and his team having one goal.
“We started this season off with a state championship in mind. It was pretty much state championship or bust,” Barnes recalled.
After a memorable weekend in Jefferson, the Rams completed that mission.
Led by individual title-winners Jeremiah Hollomon and Elija Godwin, Newton captured not only the first state championship in program history but the first team crown since the baseball team won the state title in 1979.
“We knew we had the talent to do it, to have it happen … it was kind of surreal,” Barnes said. “It’s really just now hitting me, really, we won the state championship.”
The championship, which came by just three points over runner-up South Gwinnett, nearly didn’t materialize after the Rams’ 400-relay team, which includes Godwin, dropped the baton and didn’t finish the race. Godwin and Hollomon teamed up with Artice Hobbs and Alex Sands to pick up a second-place finish in the 1,600-relay, the final event of the meet. That wrapped up the historic victory.
“We dropped the baton in the four-by-one (and) we were really antsy,” Barnes said. “We knew it was going to come down to the four-by-four. It was really nerve-racking.”
“It was hard on us. It was very emotional,” Godwin said of the 400-relay mishap. “(The rest of the team) really just kept us up because we felt really bad after that four-by-one. Everybody was down, just like a negative feeling, and they kept us up telling us that we can do it. They had our backs the whole way through (and) we came back hard.”
Individually the Rams picked up contributions from a number of athletes. Hollomon captured the triple jump gold medal for the second consecutive season and Godwin was the 400-meter champion and also finished fourth in the 200.
Alex Sands secured a pair of fifth-place finishes in the 100 and 200; Mushadi Ibere was fourth in the high jump and eighth in the long jump and Jeremiah Bundrage placed eighth in the shot put. With the small margin of victory over South Gwinnett (and third-place Campbell and Lakeside-DeKalb, both of which finished just five points back), the Rams needed every one of those points.
“Everybody did contribute, it was a full team effort,” Barnes said. “Those points were very big for us. I just felt pride as a coach because those guys deserve everything they got. I wouldn’t ask for a better group of kids.”
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