East coach Cris Leckonby and Chase Burris with Miley Carrico and Sadie Featherstone.

The finish of the 300 hurdles.

 

Staff report

GREENSBORO — No Rowan County girl has ever run the 300 intermediate hurdles in state competition as fast as East Rowan senior Sadie Featherstone did in the 3A Championships on Friday.

Featherstone, who has been recruited by a lot of schools this spring, clocked a PR 43.32 seconds at the North Carolina A&T track. She needed her career best to edge Laura Covarrubias, who came down from the mountain town of Franklin to run 43.39 in Greensboro.

The 3A state meet record is 43.15, so these were exceptional times.

Featherstone won the race with a furious finish and a lean at the end, capping a tremendous senior year with a state gold medal.

East sophomore Miley Carrico ran 47.67 in the event and finished 11th. Featherstone and Carrico were the only Mustangs who qualified for the state meet.

Featherstone’s state title is the fifth won by an East Rowan girl in an NCHSAA outdoor track and field championship.

She is the first East hurdler to win gold.

East had two different girls (Jordan Huffman and Rachel Karriker) win discus titles back-to-back in 2004-05.

Rebekah Frick pulled off the 1600-3200 double in 1993 for the other two East individual state outdoor titles. As people who follow local cross country and track and field know, she is now Rebekah Julian and has given birth to three special distance runners. The latest phenom is South Rowan freshman Hope Julian.

As far as countywide, there have been only a handful of Rowan girls who have won the 300 hurdles at the state level. It’s a demanding event that requires sprinting and jumping combined with unusual stamina.

West Rowan’s Amber Holloway won the 300 hurdles in 3A in 2010 with a 44.10 clocking.

North Rowan’s Tai’lah Ward won the 300 hurdles in 1A in 2022 with a time of 45.70.

North’s Latasha Pharr is considered the greatest Rowan track and field female athlete ever and rightly so because she was so special at so many different events. Pharr could jump, sprint and hurdle with the best, but even Pharr never ran a 300 hurdles time in a state meet as fast as Featherstone. Maybe if she’d been pushed all the way to the wire she could have, but that’s something we’ll never know.

Pharr won the 300 hurdles in 2A three straight seasons from 1999-2001. Her fastest winning time was 44.05 in 2000.