Banner Sports Sponsored by the Patriots Foundation
Members of the Snowden High School track team raced to gold on Sunday, January 5th, an amazing feat for these 9th graders from Boston. They competed in the Massachusetts State Track Association (MSTCA) track and field competition at the Reggie Lewis Center in Roxbury. During the meet, for freshman and sophomore underclassmen, members of The Snowden International School track team won the 4 x 400 relay and individually won two other events, the 1000 and 300 meter respectively.
The team has some exceptional athletes who compete both on the elite circuit the MIAA school meets.
Nasir Camille, a Snowden freshman, set a meet record in his gold medal race. Nasir, who has been running since second grade, captured the Gold Medal in the400-meter race at the 2023 Junior Olympics held in New York. He is currently ranked 3rd nationally in this event. Tomorrow Peoples-Taylor, the Boston Lions track Club Coach, said she “basically discovered natural talent” at an early age and took him under my wing.” Ironically, Coach Peoples- Taylor’s brother Damian set the record that Nasir has recently broken
Terrence McGhee, another Snowden/ Lions runner, is ranked number 1 in Massachusetts and 5th nationally in the 1,000-meter run in his age group. This team is so dominant that they continue to beat both city and state competition. Snowden track coach, Nasiar Rivera has other elite runners on this Snowden “Super Team”. Senior Rick Barros won the 200-meter dash at the Boston Holiday Challenge track meet held in Allston, AM, with a time of 22.12. “I believe he has a very good chance to win the state title in the 300 meters,” says Rivera, noting that “he was the 3rd fastest in the 200 during the outdoor track season”. Talking about his team, the Snowden International coach explains, “So this group is better than last year, and our next year’s team is probably going to be better than this year’s team.” It’s a remarkable feat for the Newbury Street school that has only 460 students who mostly hail from Roxbury Dorchester and Mattapan. Coach Rivera opines,” There was some luck involved, but I have to also believe that some people were seeing our success last year and wanted to be a part of it. I think that played a big part in our growing team’s success.”
Coach Lorena Rivera, Da’Kayla Wigfall, Amarie Allde, Elizabeth Allder, Zada Tom, Lillyana Lopes-Barlee, Ayan Desir, Coach Kiet Blake-Thompson PHOTO: RAQUEL PINA
2024 was also a good year for the Jamaica Plain Brookline Patriots Bantam Cheer Team. This squad won the 2024 National Championship competition held in Orlando, FL. Their win was exceptional, with over 500 teams competing for the coveted title. Coach Yamiley Millor explained why this was a special year because they came in third last year. “They just were motivated to do it this year. They were excited, so the girls moved up from the younger squad to the older squad, and they just had great enthusiasm and worked as a team to accomplish the task.” Some of the squad played on the coed boys and girls football team.
“There were two girls that were football players, and they became cheerleaders because they wanted to stay in the organization, but stay in as cheerleaders for their first experience,” said Millor. That decision turned out to be a smart one because this group came home as National Champions.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.