Lee-Davis track team gets big help from Golden

Lee-Davis sophomore Montasia Golden scored 51 points at the Capital District meet, winning the long jump and 300-meter dash, taking second in the triple and 55 hurdles, and helping L-D win the 1,600 relay. High school track previews It's time to run . . . outdoors Lee-Davis has Golden opportunity to make some noise Lee-Davis High School's golden rule for track and field reads like this: When Montasia Golden enters an event, plan on tacking plenty of points to the Confederates' tally.

L-D coach Neil Mathews was asked if Golden might be racing in the spikeprints of such standouts as Hermitage's Queen Harrison and L-D's Rachel Butler.

"Montasia's well on her way," he said. "She runs, jumps, hurdles - does it all, just like Queen and Rachel."

Olympian Harrison now competes for Virginia Tech; Butler for Nebraska.

Meanwhile, sophomore Golden, 16, is just getting started with a Lee-Davis squad that looms this spring as a region contender.

Some athletes lose their luster at big meets; Golden shines even brighter.

The multithreat helped accumulate 51 points at the Capital District meet, winning the long jump and 300-meter dash, taking second in the triple and 55 hurdles, and helping L-D win the 1,600 relay.

In spurring L-D to a second-place finish in the region behind Deep Run, Golden's sparkling line read: first in the 300, second in the hurdles, fifth in the triple jump, sixth in high jump, part of victorious 1,600 relay.

Even then, Golden left 10 points on the table by fouling out of her best event, the long jump.

"That just showed how young and aggressive she is," Mathews said.

Golden signed up for track as a sixth-grader at Stonewall Jackson Middle. Quickly, she sprinted to the front of the pack.

"I don't think I ever saw Montasia lose a race herself or lose a relay," Mathews said. "She basically won everything."

Before track, there was rec-league basketball and neighborhood sports for the bouncy 5-8 Mechanicsville resident.

"I used to run around, playing with my older brothers [Zach White, Dwayne Golden]," she said. "I wasn't involved in anything else in middle school, so I signed up for track. When I found I was decent at it, I decided to continue."

Region roundup: If there was such a thing as a Mt. Rushmore for local girls track, three faces would be set in stone.

Henrico's Elaine Derricott (another multievent gazelle), the Dobbs sisters (distance running Erica and Courtney) of Deep Run, jumper extraordinaire Briana Hudson, also of Deep Run, Patrick Henry's region 55 champ Shyra Molton . . . and L-D's "Golden Girl."

This spring, Golden will be chasing Butler's heaping collection of school records and perhaps her first state crown.

"I'd like to win an event at states," she said. "I don't even care which event; I'd just like to win one."