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Senior comes up rosesBy GREG AUMAN © St. Petersburg Times, published May 8, 2001 Rodney Byrd has had boys win individual championships in track, but on Saturday, discus thrower Raquel Lao was the first girls state champion he's worked with at Hernando. As a result, Byrd committed the track coach faux pas of not having a bouquet of flowers waiting for Lao when her throw of 118 feet, 1 inch held up as the best in Class 3A. He did, however, have the sense to stop when he noticed a man selling flowers on the side of the road as they drove home from Coral Gables. "Roses, red roses," said Lao, who joins sprinter John Capel and distance runner Brian Major as the Leopards' third track state champion in five years. "My coach even bought me flowers." Long after the roses are gone, Lao will have the gold medal she hung proudly around her neck at school Monday. Winning the title marked the fruition of six years of hard work at practice, and in the more immediate past, made the Hernando senior feel better about the long drive her family had made from Brooksville to watch her compete. "That was a long drive," said Lao, who will graduate second in her class this spring. "But I think it was worth it." Lao, who had finished eighth in last year's state meet, entered Saturday with the best mark out of 16 regional qualifiers. She scratched on her third and final preliminary throw, however, making her the fourth seed for the final three throws. Lao had been "spinning" for her first three attempts, taking a longer approach to the throw, but after seeing that no one in the field had topped 115 feet, Byrd instructed her to simply "punch" the attempt. "You just stand there and chuck it," he explained. Lao's first try went 116 feet, almost a foot farther than any competitor's throw. She scratched on her second, but extended her lead to nearly three feet by clearing 118-1 on her last attempt. That was 14 inches short of her winning mark in last week's regional at Central, and three more competitors had chances to top her performance, including Trinity's Jennifer Donahue, who had cleared 118-61/2 at Central. "I was nervous," admitted Lao, who was able to celebrate a landslide victory of 35 inches when the final competitor's throw fell well short. "I had really been looking forward to state, just being at state, so this made me feel very happy." Lao, who set a school record by clearing 124 feet in her first meet of this season, finished her senior year undefeated. "She's progressed and really worked at it," Byrd said. "She's done a wonderful job. But if she can punch farther than any kid in the state, if she had gotten a spin together, she probably could have thrown 130. That tells you how much strength she has."
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