Lady Yoe track looking for state championship
The Lady Yoe track and field team will be headed to Austin on Thursday for the state track meet to try and claim the schools first state championship since 2011.
The girls have certainly given themselves many chances to claim the title as they have qualified for ten different events on Thursday.
A huge reason for their success has been from the coaching of Kayla Janicek. She has worked in Cameron ISD for four years now and this year is her second as the coach of the girl’s track and field. Though she feels this is technically her first year since she was unable to coach a full season last year due to the early shutdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic that shut down all spring sports. In her first true year of coaching the team, she has led them to a chance to compete in a state championship in track and field.
“It’s amazing but it’s also nerve racking, but I’m confident in what I do,” Janicek said. “I feel like I’ve built a relationship with these kids since they’ve been in junior high. So, it’s been easy, because I know these kids, they know me, they know my expectations, and we’re all in it together and we want to win.”
That group of kids comes in all grades from freshman Seally Smith to senior Ja’Kerra Holt. Many of the girls this season have put their names in the district records.
Brandi Drake recorded the second highest time in the 200-meter race and the 11th highest long jump. Logan Pevehouse recorded the fifth best time in the 1600-meter race and the second fastest time in the 3200-meter race. Lauren Harris recorded the 12th fastest time in the 200-meter race and the eighth fastest time in the 400-meter race. Ja’Kerra Holt was also impressive as she recorded the 13th fastest time in the 100-meter race, the fourth fastest time in the 400-meter race, the third longest high jump, and the second highest pole vault.
The team for the 4x200 relay, which consists of Brandi Drake, Lauren Harris, Ja’Kerra Holt, and Seally Smith, recorded the tenth fastest time. Yierra Flemings was amazing as she recorded the fourth fastest time in the 200-meter race, the second fastest time in the 100-meter hurdles, the highest long jump, the highest triple jump, and the fastest time in the 400-meter race.
Janicek has enjoyed all the success Yierra has had over this season and is confident she can help bring home a championship.
“It’s a really good feeling,” she said. “I feel like I want my senior leadership to help her (Yierra Flemmings) to make an impact, and what I mean by that is I feel like it’s them being leaders and she’s a kid who knows how to compete and knows what she wants, so it’s always helpful that she improves every meet. I knew that she was going to come out and work hard and she could be at that state track meet and potentially win state in some of her events.”
That senior leadership comes from the lone senior on this state bound squad, Ja’Kerra Holt, who has made a tremendous contribution to the team. Coach and the team admire her hard work and dedication to the team and to the season.
“She’s phenomenal, she’s a great kid,” Janicek said. “She’s always the first one out to the track, always the last one to leave. She wants it, she wants to compete, and she was going to do anything this year that she could possibly do to get into the state track meet.”
However, Coach Janicek’s confidence in the teams’ chances to get to state came during the season, as she kept up with all of the results all around her, and then started tallying everything into district.
Janicek began comparing Cameron’s district times to the other schools in the state. With the results she gathered, she was more than confident that if the team won district, that everything was going to come pretty easy up until the state meet in Austin.
Janicek and the girls plan to work extra hard in practice and to do a lot of speed work, and they’ll be working on chasing each other. She also had the state champion track coach from 2011, Linda Richter, come in to help with the kids on block starts. Other outsider sources were also brought in to give help and prepare as well, so anything that they felt that she and the team could do better and help them so that they can bring home wins on Thursday.
“It’s going to be really, really tough, but I feel like these girls know,” Janicek said. “These girls can compete, they don’t like to lose, they’re going to do whatever it takes. But bringing that back to Cameron would be amazing, it’d be phenomenal and those kids are the most deserving kids that I know, they deserve that.”
Coach also hopes the community of Cameron can come out to Mike A. Myers Stadium in Austin, as she feels that the city of Cameron will get to witness history by coming out to see them contend on Thursday and has faith that her team will get the much needed and deserved support.
“I think that they know that these kids have worked hard,” she said. “They know that these kids are good kids, and that they’re going to do anything that they can to win this and they know that they’re going to go out there and compete. Just knowing who those kids are and knowing how successful that they have been, I think that has also been drawing attention to them to want to go out and see them compete. I’ve seen it all over social media, everybody’s bragging on them, they’re like we’ve got to see these girls compete. So, I think they’re going to show up knowing everything they’ve seen them go through this season and that how successful the girls track has been.”
“We’re in Cameron, our community is one of the most supportive communities in the state of Texas, I highly believe that,” she said. “And so, when you hear that these kids are in the state track meet and they have a chance to win it all, that’s going to bring the whole community in because they are so supportive.”
The order of the events the Lady Yoe have qualified for are as follows: Yierra Flemings will start the Lady Yoe off in the long jump at 9 a.m., Logan Pevehouse will participate in the 3200-meter run at 9 a.m., Ja’Kerra Holt will be in the pole vault at 11 a.m., Yierra Flemings will be in the triple jump at 1 p.m. Brittani Drake, Brandi Drake, Lauren Harris, and Yierra Flemings will run together in the 4X100 relay at 5 p.m. Yierra Flemings will tackle the 100-meter hurdles at 5:45 p.m., Brandi Drake will run the 100-meter dash at 6:05 p.m., Yierra Flemings will race in the 400-meter dash at 6:45 p.m., Brandi Drake will run in the 200-meter dash at 7:30 p.m., and Logan Pevehouse will finish the Lady Yoe off in the 1600-meter run at 7:50 p.m. Congratulations to the Lady Yoe on a spectacular season and everyone wishes the team the best of luck.