Prep notes: Weekend has swimming, XC; Volleyball at Mosley
Friday perennially is the big day for high school sports, but more than 300 prep athletes will be competing in three events beginning Saturday morning in Bay County.
The eighth annual Marlin Run will feature four county cross country teams at Frank Brown Park starting at 8:30 a.m. The Aquatics Center at the park also will be active with Rutherford and Arnold hosting Tallahassee Maclay in swimming, and across the bridge Mosley High School will be the site of the Panhandle Fall Volleyball Classic.
Arnold cross country coach Walter Hodges said his boys squad has won the past three Marlin Runs, but since this is the first meet for his boys and girls contingents wasn’t predicting victory against Bay, Mosley and Rutherford.
The girls race is at 8:30 a.m. followed by the boys at 9:15 a.m.
Returning girls county champion Mikayla Hodges (no relation), a junior, gives the Marlins a strong threat in the opening 5K run. Coach Hodges said he expects senior Challen Hyman and freshman Jordan Lance to have a chance to break 18 minutes in the boys division.
An Open 5K race for coaches and varsity and junior varsity runners who don’t get to compete in the school competition will follow at 10 a.m., with awards at 10:45 a.m.
Swimming
Rutherford and Arnold will be hosting Maclay out of Tallahassee in a triangular meet Saturday morning. Rutherford coach Jennifer Morgan said that warmups begin at 9 a.m. with races following in the next hour.
The diving competition will follow the conclusion of the swimming races.
Volleyball
The Panhandle Fall Volleyball Classic is in its 12th year, but not all of them have been at Mosley. A field that includes all five Bay County public high schools is augmented by Pace, Navarre, Walton, Gulf Breeze, Choctawhatchee, Pensacola Catholic and North Florida Christian.
Play will begin at 8 a.m. at Mosley with six schools competing in the first wave of action that continues at 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. Starting at 11 a.m. the second wave of six schools starts and continues at noon and 1 p.m.
The field has been sectioned into four pools of three teams. The top seeds in those pools are Mosley, Pensacola Catholic, Arnold and defending champion Gulf Breeze.
Mosley has been in the finals the past five tournaments and met Gulf Breeze in the past three.
Each school will play two matches in pool play, which will determine whether they qualify for the Gold (first place in pool), Silver (second place) or Bronze (third place) brackets. Semifinals will be conducted in all brackets with the finals in each expected to start about 5:30 p.m.
All schools therefore are guaranteed four matches. In pool play they will be best two-out-of-three sets. In the finals they will be three out of five.
All matches will be held at Mosley, except for the Bronze semifinals and finals that will be played at nearby Mowat Middle School. An all-day admission pass is $5.
