FLOWOOD — On Friday, Joshua Collins won a state championship in an event he rarely competes in. Twenty-four hours later, he added a medal in an event he’s much more familiar with.

Collins, a junior from Tallulah Academy, earned a silver medal in the 110 meter hurdles Saturday at the MAIS Class A state track and field meet at Jackson Prep. The running medal joined the gold he won Friday in the pole vault.

Collins said he often tried the pole vault for fun, and he did finish second at last year’s state meet, but he rarely practices on a regular basis. He only competes to give the Trojans what are basically free points in the team standings, since few Class A teams have pole vaulters.

He borrowed a pole for the district meet two weeks ago, then won the South State title with a leap of 11 feet. He cleared 9 feet, 6 inches on Friday after the other five vaulters failed to clear 9 feet.

“I pole vaulted every year, but I never practiced or anything. I just go do it. It’s pretty cool,” Collins said. “At South State I got 11 feet. I don’t even know where that came from. The highest I had ever gotten was 9. I only had to get 9-6 yesterday because everybody else got out at 9.”

Collins had won the Class AA championship in the 110 meter hurdles in 2017. He improved his time from a year ago, but ran into a tough opponent and a couple of literal hurdles that derailed his effort to repeat.

Mt. Salus’ Noah Govero clocked a time of 16.24 seconds on Saturday to beat Collins, who finished in 16.64.

“The competition has been tough. I won last year’s state in the hurdles, but we went back down to 1A and there was a kid that was a little bit faster than me. I’ve just got to work on it and I’ll be a little bit better. I’ll be back,” Collins said. “I’ve got to learn how to three-step. I four-step every one of them, and I hit about three hurdles and that knocked off a little bit of time.”

Tallulah Academy did claim another state title moments after Collins’ runner-up finish. Freshman sprinter Faith Kivett clocked a time of 13.23 seconds to win the girls’ 100 meter dash title.
“I was really nervous coming into it, so it feels good to win. I got the jitters out,” Kivett said. “The first part of it, I got a good jump and felt good about it. I felt like at the first of it that it was going to be a good race.”

Kivett also finished second in the long jump during Friday’s field events.

Also on Friday, Logan Tullos added another title to Tallulah’s haul by winning the boys’ high jump with a height of 5 feet, 8 inches.