Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Lions Doherty and Hazleton become Spartans

Leon High School distance runners Riley Doherty and John Hazleton will be taking their athletic careers to Spartanburg and the University of South Carolina-Upstate next year. The two Leon Lion seniors signed National Letters of Intent on Tuesday afternoon, 23 February 2011 to compete for the Upstate Spartans. Then they headed out to do more running--because that's what runners do.


Doherty is in the final track season of four years of running at Leon. He was part of the cross-country team at the state championships each year of the Lions' three seasons of consecutive state cross-country titles--2007, 2008, and 2009. At the end of that three-year run he broke into the top ten at the 2009 state championships, running 15:53 for the five kilometers of cross country to place fifth behind teammates Matt Mizereck (1st, 15:22) and Will Stanford (4th, 15:52). At the 2010 FHSAA state cross-country championships Doherty led the Lions to a third-place finish in the team standings, finishing fourth in 15:48. Doherty ended his high school cross-country career back in Tallahassee with a seventh-place finish at the 2010 FACA Senior All-Star Meet. With his senior track season still ahead of him, Doherty has personal bests on the track of 4:31.15 in the 1,600m and 9:28.98 in the 3,200m. The latter record came at the 2010 FHSAA-3A state track and field championships, where Doherty placed fifth in the 3,200m.


Hazleton is also coming to the end to four years as an athlete at Leon. Having never run before his freshman year in high school, his accomplishments through his sophomore year were modest at best, but he improved steadily. By his junior year he was the fourth runner on Leon's 2009 state champion cross-country team. His senior year he was the 2010 District 1-3A cross-country champion, and went on to place seventh at the 2010 FHSAA-3A state cross-country championships, running 15:55. Two weeks later Hazleton closed out his high school cross-country career with a 16:07 fifth-place finish at the 2010 FACA Senior All-Star Meet, leading the North squad to the meet title. With all these accomplishments in the books, you can only hope that folks will make more of an effort to spell his name correctly from now on.


The USC-Upstate Spartans compete in NCAA Division 1 in the Atlantic Sun Conference. Head coach Jimmy Stephens and associate head coach Carson Blackwelder lead the cross-country and track programs at Upstate. Behind the running of Gilbert Kemboi, the Spartan men have finished third in the conference cross-country championships each of the last two years.


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Posted by Herb Wills at 12:10 PM
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