TAMPA, Fla. — If the Westchase Cheetahs sound fast, well, they are fast.
King Hamilton, Jamel Benyard, George Johnson, and Isaiah Lassiter make up the fastest 10-and-under 4x100 meter relay team in the country.
The AAU Junior Olympic Games are the pinnacle for young athletes.
But going into the games, this fast foursome wasn’t really on the radar after finishing in ninth place last year. They knew exactly what to fix to bring home gold this time.
“We had to clean up a lot,” George Johnson, 9, told ABC Action News sports anchor Kyle Burger. “We had to practice our handoffs…The most important adjustment we made was communicating with each other.”
Shaving seconds off their time all starts with passing the baton.
“Usually, when we hand-off, we would say ‘stick’ for them to put their hand back,” Johnson added. “When we see their hand, we would put this baton in their hand.”
“I don’t really coach them hard; they’re kids. I let them be kids,” Westchase Cheetahs coach Jerrod Macklin said. “But at the same time, the attention to detail, this is what we need to fix.”
This team was faster than 63 other teams from all over the country.
“Texas, Oregon, California,” King Hamilton and Jamel Benyard named off.
To win gold, they edged Texas by seven-tenths of a second, which is about 5-6 meters.
“Exciting. I had hopes that we were going to get in first,” Benyard said. “I just had a feeling that we were.”
“As soon as I saw the first leg hand to the second leg, I knew we had a chance to win,” Macklin said. “In my mind, ‘we about to win.’ Then when Jamel handed off to George Johnson, I knew in my mind where we were placed as far as the rest of the relays. I said, ‘we going to win this thing.”
The Cheetahs weren’t the only team from Tampa Bay to bring gold back home from Greensboro, N.C. Bryan Drayton, from Clearwater, broke the eight-and-under national Javelin record by nearly ten feet.
