By Mike London
mike.london@salisburypost.com

SALISBURY — Salisbury High junior Finnegan Avery laughs out loud when he’s asked if his gold medal from the 1A/2A Indoor Track State Championships is still draped around his neck.

“Nope,” he says cheerfully, “it’s just hanging on the wall over there with the other one.”

Not many high school students can nonchalantly say they’ve won two state championships, but Avery can. He was part of the 4×800 crew that won an outdoor state title in 2024.

Special things are happening with Salisbury track and field, especially in the relays, so some of Avery’s teammates have bitten into even more gold medals than he has. Sophomores Samuel Fatovic and  Jordan Waller and senior Jeremiah Davidson won two apiece on Feb. 14 at the JDL Fast Track in Winston-Salem as they doubled up as 4×800 and 4×400 winners.  Football star Jaylyn Smith joined that trio on the 4×400 gold medalists, while Avery completed the 4×800 unit.

Salisbury’s 4×400 crew has gone back-to-back in the Indoor Championships. Fatovic, Waller and Smith also chewed up the track for the 2024 champs. The only change this year from the 2024 4×400 roster was the subtraction of football phenom Jamal Rule, who transferred to Charlotte Christian.

Rule was a county champ guy in the 400, so Davidson had large shoes to fill. But the son of former Salisbury running back Tyris Davidson rose to the occasion — and then some.

“I really didn’t feel like there was any extra pressure on me, ” Davidson said modestly. “I knew my coaches believed in me and my teammates believed in me. I just ran for them.”

Davidson led off the 4×400 lineup and handled the third leg on the 4×800.

Hanson Saryee, a Salisbury High graduate who sprinted alongside legend Romar Morris 15 years ago, is the head coach for Salisbury indoor track. He knows the history, and the runners he guides have embraced the tradition. They are proud to wear the black, red and gold.

Salisbury indoor track has produced state champions dating back to 1990. That was the year Andre Steele sped to victory in the 500-yard dash (they started running 500 meters in 1995). Back in those days, Steele had to beat every blazer in the state — 1A, 2A, 3A and 4A. Salisbury also had a pole vault champion in that meet when Carlos McCain cleared 13 feet.

Morris won the 55 meters in 2011 when he was acknowledged as the fastest man in the state and was the state’s male athlete of the year. Other male Salisbury indoor state champs include high jumper William Brown (2012) and triple jumpers Brandon Cathcart (2005) and Marcus Cook (2022).

The first breakthrough for the Hornets in the relays didn’t come until last winter’s 4×400 when Rule, Smith, Waller and Fatovic set the pace.

While he’s only a sophomore, Fatovic now owns won four relay golds — two indoor 4x400s, this year’s 4×800 and last spring’s 4×800 outdoor title.

Fatovic also achieved All-America status with the Next Generation AAU program that debuted last summer and immediately made an impact at the state level.

“Most of the Next Generation runners go to Salisbury High or will go to Salisbury High,” Saryee said. “The Next Generation track program and the Salisbury High track program work together hand-in-hand. The guys who ran with us last summer improved a lot with coaching from Nick Summers. That has put them ahead of the competition.”

Fatovic made a decision a few years ago to switch his athletic focus from soccer to track, and it’s working out for him. He runs cross country and is considered to be at his best as a distance man — he finished eighth in the 1000 meters in Winston-Salem —  but he also is fast enough to compete with good high school sprinters.

“The adjustment to running a 400 or 800 is mental more than physical for me,” Fatovic said. “Just focusing on being able to run fast for a whole race instead of trying to pace myself.”

Fatovic ran the second leg on the 4×400 at this year’s indoor state meet, but he is the anchor man on the 4×800.

“Finishing that 4×800 was probably as good a feeling as I’ve had in track because we were DQ’d in that  event last year,” Fatovic said. “That one meant a lot to me.”

Fatovic was flying. He ran a 1:57 on his 800.

Saryee said the Hornets don’t work on baton exchanges much. They spend their time working on running.

“In the shorter relays, the 4×100 and the 4×200, the baton exchanges are much more difficult,” Saryee explained. “In the longer relays, they shouldn’t be a problem. Guys aren’t coming in hot.”

One of Saryee’s key jobs was figuring out the optimum running order for the Hornets in the relays. That’s why Fatovic and his teammates had different roles on different relays.

“They all have different personalities and different strengths,” Saryee said. “So the order they run in is extremely important. Chemistry means everything in the relays. We’ve got two distance guys (Fatovic and Avery) who also can go fast. Smith is an outstanding sprinter. We’ve got Waller, who is special in that he can run the 400 and 800 equally well. Davidson is a speed guy, but we convinced him he also could be very successful 800 runner. He turned out to be huge for us. All five are gifted, but you’re only going to go as far as your work ethic will take you, and they’ve all put in the work it takes to excel. They run really tough races. The 400 is a hard race, but the 800 is an even tougher race because there’s strategy to it. There’s strategy because no human can run 800 meters at max speed.”

Through a brutal winter, Saryee found the best role for everyone.

Waller, who now owns three gold medals, was new to the 800, but he turned into a dominating lead-off man for that event, as well as a devastating anchor man for the 4×400.

Waller always handed the baton to Avery for the second leg, with a lead, and Avery usually expanded the gap between the Hornets and their pursuers.

“I tried to give us a great start in the 4×800,” Waller said. “I was always ready to run at every meet and I think that goes back to all the work we did back in the summer. The summer was crazy for us, but state championships prove that hard work does pay off.”

Between the relays, Waller had an individual fifth place in the 300 meters. Smith placed third in that event. Those 10 points from the 300 helped Salisbury finish third in the team scoring.

Smith broke records with 15 touchdown catches for the football team in the fall, but he also put heart and soul into track, a sport that doesn’t get nearly as much attention.

“I did as much track work in the summer as I could before football workouts started,” Smith said. “When I’m running, I just tell myself to go hard, to give 100 percent all the time. These guys are more than teammates, they’re family, they’re brothers. I wasn’t going to let them down.”

Racing “up” was another part of Saryee’s blueprint for success. Salisbury’s runners didn’t seen many 1A and 2A schools during the regular season. Instead, they competed against some of the state’s best 3A and 4As to get ready, and they won convincingly in both of their relays in the 1A/2A State Championships. They won by more than three seconds over Seaforth in the 4×400, running an even quicker time (3:38.94) than when they had Rule. The Hornets ran 8:13 to finish eight seconds ahead of second-place Brevard in the 4×800. Those are blowouts in those events.

Saryee isn’t boastful, but he has confidence that more championships will be coming in the years ahead.

Avery agrees with him. Avery smiles when people tell him how hard running the 800 is because he’d rather run the 800 than eat. He was born to run, and he loves to run, whether it’s 800 meters or eight miles.

“I’m planning on another gold medal in the 4×800 in the spring,” he said. “We’ve got dedicated coaches and dedicated guys who will show up every day and put in the work every day. When we walked away from States, we knew we’d earned everything we got.”