The Marist Boys closed out the Spring Break section of the season with a historic weekend. On Friday, the Marist boys broke a 14-year-old state record in the 4x1600 relay by clocking a 17:19.45. That mark snuck under the previous 2010 mark set by Brookwood over 17:20.26. The War Eagles’ relay team was manned by Ian Gaffney, Andrew Strickland, Liam Hanemann and Tommy Latham. Gaffney’s split was 4:24.30, Strickland clocked a 4:20.97, Hanemann finished with a 4:21.26 split and then Latham closed out the state record with a blazing 4:12.88.
The record-setting performance took place at the famous Arcadia Invitational in California and Latham followed it up on Saturday just 24 hours later by breaking the state-record for the 3200 meters. The junior—who received Gatorade Cross Country Player of the Year this past January clocked an 8:46.88 and edged a national field that saw a whopping 37 runners finish under the 9:00 threshold. In doing so, Latham became the first Georgia High Schooler to ever break the 8:48.00 mark.
Latham split 4:25 for his first four laps, putting him exactly on pace to match the previous state record. But, picked up the pace over the final four laps and closed his split to in 4:21 to lower the record by just under four seconds.
The Marist boys accomplished the second state-record in a relay event this season after the Druid Hills girls did it last month.
