Terrelonge at NACAC, awesome – Dyke

ARGUABLY THE best performance at the recent NACAC Under-18 and -23 Championships in San Jose, Costa Rica, from a Jamaican athlete came from Edwin Allen High School athlete Theianna Lee Terrelonge, who captured the under-18 girls’ sprint double.

Terrelonge won the 100 metres in 11.41 seconds and the 200 metres in a record 23.53 seconds.

Head coach of Edwin Allen High School’s girls’ track and field team, Michael Dyke, who has engineered the success of Tia and Tina Clayton along with Serena Cole, thinks the 15-year-old Terrelonge is a special talent.

“Theianna is very special, as when you look on her transition where I have had one full season to work with her due to injury concerns, this is awesome,” said Dyke.

“At this stage, only Tina was ahead of her but once she remains injury free, sky’s the limit for her. Because of her height she has an advantage over the others and she is really speedy,” said Dyke.

At the ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys and Girls’ Athletics Championships, Terrelonge has won the sprint double in class four, in her first year in class three and in her second year in class three, this year, won the 100 metres and finished second in the 200.

“She was not able to prepare properly for Champs and I was even thinking of pulling her out of the 200 metres,” Dyke explained.

“I think her fast time in winning the 200 metres in Costa Rica was a result of this as she had more time in preparing for this Championships,” said Dyke.

Dyke said that he wouldn’t be rushing his young charge. Preferring instead to be very careful with her.

“After winning the under-20 sprint double at the National Championships, I decided to pull her from the Junior Pan Am Championships and instead to compete with the under-18 girls as I really do not want to push her as she is still very young and still has the Commonwealth Youth Games in Trinidad to compete in,” he said.

Though she will just be in her first year of class two, Dyke believes there won’t be a faster schoolgirl in the island come next season

“When you look on all the girls who will be leaving high school this season, I think she will be the fastest schoolgirl in the country,” he said.

Dyke is of the belief that with Terrelonge, Edwin Allen can continue its rich history of having athletes do very well on the international stage.

“The aim is for an Edwin Allen athlete to make it a hat-trick of wins at the World Under-20 Championships and the plan is for Terrelonge to continue that trend next year,” said a confident Dyke.

Tina Clayton won back-to-back under-20 100-metre titles.