The Souderton girls’ track and field team made history this weekend, capturing the program’s first ever PIAA 3A state title. (Photos/info provided by Souderton T&F)
Souderton girls’ track and field has boasted some outstanding athletes over the years but did not have a single team title to its credit, not even a league title.
“I think cross country won a league title a year or two ago on the boys’ side, but other than that, the banners – they’re naked, they’re completely empty,” Souderton coach Anthony Pace said.
All that changed during a remarkable and memorable stretch the past two weeks.
Last week, the team made history when it captured the District 1 3A title. This past weekend, Souderton walked away with more hardware, holding off a late surge by JP McKasky to capture the PIAA 3A state title at Shippensburg University. Souderton edged McKasky 33-29 in the team competition.
The Indians rode the brilliant performances of Destini Smith, who completed the extremely rare triple crown and is quite simply in a league of her own
Smith was a state champion in all three jumping events. Her triple jump mark of 42-7 was first by roughly 3 feet. In high jump, she was flawless, only having to jump four times without a miss and finishing with 5-7. This approach allowed her to be as fresh as possible for long jump, and it paid off winning the event by almost 10 inches and a mark of 19-11.5.
“She did it at districts, and I’m like – states is going to be a lot harder,” Pace said. “There’s going to be four or five people jumping in the same area versus one or two. There might have been seven potential 19-foot long jumpers, and high jumpers – in the winter, someone beat her jumping six feet, and that was Lexi Boiardi from Avon Grove, but she had an off day. Destini was the number one seed in all three events and held true. She never trailed the entire day.”
The magical journey began with Smith winning the triple jump on her very first jump.
“Right off the bat 42-7, and the next closest is 39,” Pace said. “She tried to do a couple more. She already has the best mark in the state, but she was trying to do the state championship record. She probably had it on the second jump in the finals, but unfortunately, she fouled. That might have been a 44-foot jump – she was so far out and literally was just maybe two inches over the board.
“We took the approach in all three jumping events to just try to be fresh, try to make sure we could try to win all three and see what happened.
“High jump couldn’t have played out any better. She skipped 5-foot, she skipped 5-5, so she did 5-2, 5-4, 5-6. She did 5-7, no one else hit 5-7, and then she was able to stop. She cleared everything on her first attempt – four jumps and was done. Last year, she won triple jump, but it took her six jumps, and then high jump – she probably took 11 jumps and then she was completely gassed for long jump and didn’t even make finals.”
This year, it was another story entirely. Smith won long jump to make it a clean sweep in the jumps.
“She just destroyed and dominated every event,” Pace said. “She had a perfect season. She didn’t lose once in the entire year. Whether it was top American at Penn Relays, New Balance Nationals, the Virginia Showcase – she won every single event she did in the entire outdoor season. It’s just crazy.”
Also medaling for the Indians was Janae Pettaway, who finished sixth overall in the 100M dash with a time of 12.20. She was able to advance to the finals the day prior, finishing fifth overall in the prelims (12.28).
“Those points were massive,” Pace said. “We were up on JP McKasky by about 15 points with a couple of events left. All of a sudden, they got seventh place in one of the throwing events, and then they got second place in the 200m, and we’re up only five points.
“They were in the 4x4. They were seeded fourth, and they had the fifth or sixth best time, and I’m like – we’re probably going to win or lose states
by a point, and luckily for us, they finished eighth in the 4x4, but to me, if we’re only up 30-28 and they only need to finish sixth or seventh, they’re going to finish sixth or seventh. They needed to finish third, and they weren’t able to, but if they only needed to get to 30 or 31 points, I think they would have been able to do that, so those three points were really crucial.”
Souderton’s 4x100 relay team of Savannah Powlus, Isiyah McFadden, Brooke Wagner, Laysha Lee, Aubrie Weismantel and Leah Dufraine also competed during the championship winning weekend..
“I thought our 4x1 had a chance to score points also because they made states in the hardest district, and we tried to tweak our handoffs because we knew we needed to be even better than we were at districts to make state finals, and it just didn’t work out that day,” Pace said. “We got the points we needed. We thought going into districts 40 or 41 could be the magic number to do it all.
“Rick (Hess) and I thought 33 points is probably what we could get at states if things went right. We could get 35 or 36 if things go perfect, but we could also get 26 if things didn’t go well, so we thought 33 was probably our magic number, and we literally got both numbers we were looking for in districts and states and were able to win a title in both.”
In June, Smith, a Kansas State commit, will be heading to Oregan to compete in the 2025 USATF U20 Outdoor Championships and then will return home to compete in the New Balance Nationals.
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