In late April, a couple of days before the NEW 6 Conference track & field championship meet, Rocky Mount High boys' coach Dee Anna Davis studied her lineup and realized that, in order to afford her team its best opportunity to win the conference crown, she would need to do something that most coaches would not comprehend, much less execute. She would have little choice but to enter Jacobi Jenkins, the star sprinter and hurdler for the Gryphons, in four individual events.

No matter how smart and how strong and how chiseled they might be – and Jenkins, a senior this season for the Gryphons, is smart, strong and particularly chiseled – few high school athletes are able to compete in four individual events at any meet. Fewer still are able to sprint to the front of the pack and win all four. Granted, Jenkins did not win all four events at the conference meet.

No, he won only three.

He finished second in the fourth. By one one-hundredth of a second.

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