North Florida Relays enters final year before format change

PANAMA CITY — It is fitting that in the final North Florida Relays on Saturday at Tommy Oliver Stadium, meet director Aaron Byas pointed to a pair of relay events as potential headliners.

Like the Rams Relays held last weekend, and many other track and field extravaganzas that are changing formats, Byas said the 30th annual event will become an invitational next March.

Ten schools have committed to the NFR, begun by former Bay coach Garry Terrell in the 1970s and revived by Byas four years ago.

Byas, who oversees both boys and girls track programs which currently are on the rise at host Bay, remained upbeat about the caliber of competition on Saturday.

“The field is going to be great,” he said. “We have the Class 2A state runner-up in Godby (boys) and the 1A runner-up in Port St. Joe (girls). We also have a Tennessee team coming, Martin Luther King High School which is a charter school.”

The meet begins at 10 a.m. with the field events, the 4x800 relay and preliminaries for the high and low hurdles and open 100.

Finals begin at 12:30 p.m.

Godby and Port St. Joe teams are the defending NFR champions. They won their divisions handily last year while also defending state champions at the time.

 Byas doesn’t expect either to be challenged on Saturday, but is confident Bay teams can contend for runner-up in both divisions.

“We should be very competitive in both the boys and the girls, but Arnold has a very good four-by-800 girls relay team,” Byas said. “I’m looking forward to the four-by-one with Port St. Joe on the girls side, and the last race of the day (boys 4x400 relay) against Godby.”

Byas lamented the fading away of relay meets, saying that they give younger athletes a chance to compete as most schools field more than one relay per event.

Admission for the final North Florida Relays is $5.