Tupelo's Andrew Brown races to season-opening win
Aug. 31—Andrew Brown's star continues rising.
The Tupelo freshman opened the 2023 cross country season by winning the Class 5A-7A division at the Tennessee River Classic at Brooks High School on Saturday. He clocked a time of 16 minutes, 2.01 seconds — more than 21 seconds ahead of the second-place finisher.
Brown finished fifth in last year's 6A state meet. In February, he won two middle school races at the Adidas Indoor Nationals — the mile and the 3000 meters.
Then in May, he made a late charge to finish third in the 1600 at the state meet.
"They left him an opening to show how determined he was," Wheeler said. "... His competitiveness got him on the podium."
Brown is the younger brother of junior Taylor Brown, who finished fourth at last weekend's race. Taylor clocked a 15:38 at one point last season, and Wheeler believes Andrew is on a trajectory to start logging similar times.
"He's going to have his name at the top of the list of potentially several Tupelo distance records," Wheeler said.
Lafayette golf wins
The defending Class 5A state girls golf champions kept rolling on Monday.
The Lafayette Commodores finished first as a team in a match at The Trace in Saltillo. Senior Ada Grace Everett finished as the overall medalist with a nine-hold score of 39.
"That's a really tough course out there," Lafayette coach Ryan Avent said. "You can get a lot of bad breaks and it's just a grind. It's a hard course, and I just like the way they handle themselves when they get into situations."
Everett finished second among individuals at state in April. Her sister, sophomore Ainslee, finished seventh.
This year's state championship will be held at Lafayette's home course, Kirkwood National Golf Club in Holly Springs. Although it's tempting to look ahead because of that, Avent wants to make sure the team stays focused.
"We're hosting the state championship this year at Kirkwood and this'll be the first time that we do that. We need to take those distractions away and ... just worry about playing golf," he said. "Let's go to the course. Let's do what we do at practice, and if we do that, we'll be OK."
Wave swimmers start strong
Tupelo's swim team turned in several strong performances at its season-opening meet in Oxford on Saturday.
Willa Martin won both the 200 and 500 freestyle races, and she was a part of the first-place 200 freestyle relay team. Autumn Swinney took first place in the 100 butterfly. Tupelo's girls finished second as a team behind Madison Central.
On the boys side, Brooks Johnson won the 100 butterfly and 100 freestyle races. The Golden Wave finished third behind Oxford and Madison Central.
