Three Smith Sisters Contribute To Warren Central's Team Championship

By David Woods for DyeStat

RESULTS | INTERVIEWS

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Unless she throws spectacularly in June, Hadley Lucas is not going to be national girls athlete of the year in track and field. Not the way Sadie Englehardt is running.

That’s the caveat, though. Lucas is throwing so far and so often, the limits are indeterminate.

At Indiana’s 50th girls state championship Friday, the Bloomington North senior set meet records in discus and shot put. Lucas won her fourth and fifth state titles, a state record in field events.

On a day with moderate wind, she threw the discus 169 feet, 6 inches (51.66m), breaking an 11-year-old record. She had four throws exceeding 160 feet, won by 17 feet and was over 160 feet for a fifth successive meet.

“I think that whole tapering helped with my results,” she said. “It wasn’t a great wind, but it was better than last year.”

In the shot, on her final attempt, she threw 51-11 (15.82m) to complete a three-year sweep. She broke the 13-year-old record of 50-9 held by Portage’s Tori Bliss, who went on to become a two-time NCAA runner-up at LSU.

“Not a bad day when I have two goals I’ve been working for my whole high school career,” Lucas said.

The shot was deep, considering Greensburg’s Emarie Jackson (48-9/14.86m) and Crispus Attucks’ Lariah Wooden (48-3.50/14.72m) rank in the nation’s top 15.

Lucas’ state records are 175-0 (53.35m) and 54-10.75 (16.73m) – US#2 and US#1, respectively. Her shot distance equals No. 3 all-time with Michelle Carter, the 2016 Olympic gold medalist.

Lucas will travel to Eugene, Ore., in a bid to make the U.S. team for the World U20 Championships and perhaps to throw in the Olympic Trials, if she is in the top 24. The Wisconsin signee said she is prioritizing pursuit of a medal in the U20s in Lima, Peru.

Since first awarded in 1977, Track & Field News has selected three throwers as athlete of the year: Suzy Powell, 1994; Anna Jelmini, 2009; Shelbi Vaughn, 2012.

The team championship represented a redemptive, and emotional, moment for Warren Central. 

The Warriors qualified four girls for state, three of them daughters of the coach, Le’gretta Smith. Laila is a senior, Samaya a sophomore, Kira a freshman.

“Actually, all their life we knew there was going to be one year where they could run together,” the mother said. “Just to have that year be a state title year, that was nothing planned but God.”

After finishing second by one point in 2023 and 2021, the Warriors gapped the field. They scored 57.5 points – 26 by Laila Smith, 25 by Jila Vaden – to Bloomington North’s 41. Hamilton Southeastern was third with 29.

“We had to come out and leave no doubt,” the coach said.

The scariest day of the season was not Friday. That was Feb. 17.

A bus transporting eight girls to an indoor meet slid into a guardrail on I-74 near Crawfordsville, Ind. Laila was banged up, and Kira was transported to the hospital. Kira lost a tooth, endured a concussion and bruised her right shoulder.

“One second, I was on the bus. The next second, I was in my bed,” Kira said. “My brain kind of blanked out the rest.”

Coach Smith acknowledged she has thought about the incident “all the time, all the time.”

After the Warriors regrouped and rehabbed, they refocused.

“We took that time to be grateful that we were alive and able to come to practice every day,” Laila said.

Lucas set the only state meet records. Heritage Christian high jumper Kya Crooke nearly set one, and distance runners Nicki Southerland of Delta and Ava Jarrell of Pendleton made bids for three.

Warren Central set the tone in the first event, the long jump. In the second round, Vaden (20-0.75/6.11m) and Laila Smith (19-3.75/5.88m) seized first and second place, and they stayed there for 18 points.

“I feel like with us starting out before everybody, we get everyone’s energy up,” said Vaden, a Purdue recruit.  “We came in with a game plan, and we executed it.”

Vaden came within two-thousandths of a second of joining Lucas and Southerland as a double winner. Fishers’ Maya Taylor edged Vaden, 12.101 to 12.103 seconds, in the 100 meters. Vaden came back to finish third in the 200.

Smith, an uncommitted senior, was first in the 300 hurdles (43.35) for her first individual outdoor title. She was second in the 100 hurdles and long jump. Her sister, Kira, tied for third in the high jump at 5-8 (1.72m).

This was Warren Central’s sixth state championship – second to Fort Wayne Northrop’s 10 – and first since 2017. Four have come under coach Smith, who ranks second in Indiana history. The total easily could be seven, considering Warren twice was second by one point and once by two points.

Crooke jumped 5-11 (1.80m) to win her first outdoor state title, then seemingly made 6-0.25 (1.84m), which would have broken a 39-year-old meet record. She barely clipped the bar. Crooke, after winning the long jump last year, became the first Indiana girl to win at state in both long jump and high jump.

She represented the United States in last year’s U20 Pan American Championships. However, she could represent Saint Kitts and Nevis, a Caribbean island nation, in the U20s in Peru. Her father, Val, is a native of Saint Kitts and used to run track with sprinter Kim Collins, a five-time Olympian and 2003 World champion.

Southerland repeated in the 1,600 in 4:41.98, three seconds off the meet record. She held on to win the 800 in 2:06.50, or 1.55 off the record set by Park Tudor’s Gretchen Farley in beating Southerland last year. The Notre Dame recruit became the first to win state titles at 800, 1,600 and 3,200 meters in a career.

She built a lead in the 800 but was challenged down the stretch by two Bloomington runners, Ellie Barada of South and Nola Somers Glenn of North.

“I heard a lot of cheering, but I wasn’t really sure how close anybody was,” Southerland said. “But I just finished as hard as I could.”

Barada was second in 2:06.87 – a PB by four seconds, a state sophomore record and best in the nation by a sophomore this year. Glenn dropped five seconds from her PB to finish third in 2:07.28. They now rank Nos. 6 and 7 on Indiana’s all-time list.

In the 3,200, Jarrell ran the closing 400 in 71.78 to win in 10:10.05, worth No. 5 Indiana’s all-time list and seven seconds off the meet record.

“If I was at a point to where I might be able to get it, I was going to go for it,” she said.

Cross country state champion Libby Dowty, an Indian Creek sophomore, closed in 70.84 to finish second in 10:15.14.

Contact David Woods at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidWoods007