Mesa Ridge junior Janise Everett starts fast, captures 200-meter title as well as relay gold | High School Sports
Janise Everett could have found frustration with her first race on Saturday. Instead, she found a specific area to focus her attention.
The Mesa Ridge junior blamed her slow start in the 100-meter dash that left her settling for third place. So a few hours later she poured her concentration into starting out almost in the 200.
It worked, as Everett ran it in 03/25 to win the 4A title by half a second of Discovery Canyon’s Lauren McDowell. Harrison’s Michaela Cruickhank placed fifth (3/26) and Widefield’s Brea Childs (7/26) was sixth in a field largely dominated by the Pikes Peak region.
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“I focused on my start and once I got out and it felt great I was like, ‘Great. We’ve got it. We’ve got it in the bag,’” Everett said. “Right when I came off the curve I was like, they’re gone, I’ve just got to maintain it.”
Everett has spent her entire track career biding her time and making adjustments, so it should be no surprise that this is how she won her first state title.
From the time she began running in third grade, she found herself, because of her November birthday, lumped with older girls. She grew used to seeing her competitors’ backs as she lagged behind.
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However, she stayed with it because, even though the results were staying the same, her times were improving. Besides that, her mother didn’t really make it optional.
“I have so much energy that my mom just wanted to get it out,” Everett said. “Track really helped. And I fell in love with it.”
She began running track through school and in club. She took up cross country, too. This year she swore off sweets and fast food except for cheat days on Saturdays.
The results showed themselves on Sunday at Jeffco Stadium, as she added a gold medal as the anchor of Mesa Ridge’s 4×100 relay team that also included junior Danaya Kinnard, junior Oliva Clay and freshman Rimari Facey.
Everett waited a long time for this, and she savored the feeling even before her winning turn in the 200 was complete.
“That is the No. 1 feeling everyone wants to feel in all of track,” she said. “They just want to feel that drive, that pull. You can feel that pull when the gap is starting to form, you can feel it. You just dream of that feeling when you’re running.”
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