The 52nd Annual Haley Toyota Cosmopolitan Invitational Track and Field Meet will be held at William Fleming High School on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, May 4, 5 and 6.
The track meet, which is officially sanctioned by the Virginia High School League, has become the largest scholastic track meet in Southwest Virginia with boys and girls teams participating from middle, junior and senior high schools throughout the area. Cosmo 2017 will include athletes from 40 area schools this year with a total expected participation of over 1,800 students.
The meet is in its sixth year back where it began. The first Cosmopolitan Invitational Meet was held on Saturday, May 7, 1966 at William Fleming High School. There were four schools in the field: Addison High School, Jefferson High School, Patrick Henry High School and William Fleming High School. The meet attracted 115 boys for 15 events and was won by William Fleming.
The Cosmopolitan Club of Roanoke will award $3,000 scholarships to an outstanding senior boy and girl participating in this year’s meet. Including this year’s scholarships, the club has awarded over $72,000 in scholarships since 2000.
Cosmo 2017 gets underway at 3 p.m. Thursday afternoon with middle school track and field events. Junior and senior division track and field events will be held at William Fleming on Friday, beginning at 3 p.m. Competition resumes at 9 a.m. Saturday at Fleming when the Senior field events begin. Track events finals for middle schools and Junior and Senior Divisions will begin at 11:30 a.m.
The Parade of Athletes marches at 11 a.m. Saturday, followed by running events for all scholastic divisions. Closing award ceremonies are expected to conclude by 6:30 p.m. on Saturday.
Admission is $5 for adults and $2 for students. There is no charge for preschoolers and parking is free.
The Lord Botetourt and James River teams warmed up for the meet with a run in the Blacksburg Invitational last weekend. The host Bruins won both the boys and girls team titles, while LB was eighth and James River was 10th among 16 girls teams, and River was missing some athletes due to the school prom that night. The LB boys were seventh and James River was 11th.
“We had a lot of great performances and we’re in great shape as the conference meet gets closer,” said LB coach Christopher Caldwell.
For the LB girls the distance medley relay team of Haley Caldwell, Madison MacLean, Star Ritchie and Kaleyn Sebestin took a second. The 4×100 team of Emma Coman, Heather Finley, Lexi Haston and Reyna Petry was third.
Individually, Petry, Haston and Cassie Feltis were four, six and seven in the 100 hurdles. Sydney Robinson was ninth in the shot put.
For the boys, Max Burke won the high jump at 6’2” and was seventh in the 110 hurdles. Adrian Taylor was third in the 200 and 10th in the 100, while Connor Hayes took ninth in the 800. In the throwing events John Turner was third in the shot and Jake Mcnutt was seventh in the discus.
For River, Katelyn Wiley was third in the 300 hurdles and Will Miller took third in both the mile and two-mile. Ian Hester was third in the 300 hurdles with a personal best.
River’s 4×800 team of Abigail Link, Grace Montgomery, Emma Butler and Tessa Jones was third and the 4×400 team of Link, Wiley, Erin Walker and Montgomery took fourth.
