By Mike London
Salisbury Post
SALISBURY – Forty years ago, the most memorable moment of the Rowan County Girls Track and Field Championships came in what is traditionally the climactic race of the day – the 4×400.
The drama played out at North Rowan’s Eagle Stadium where South Rowan’s Tracy Bradshaw came diving across the finish line, toting the baton on the anchor leg for the Raiders.
Bradshaw expended maximum effort trying to catch East Rowan anchor Roxie Williams, but the Mustangs still won the event by a tiny fraction of a second.
Bleeding from an elbow, leg and knee after her all-out collision with the asphalt, Bradshaw was treated for her wounds at the finish line. Then she joined the celebration as South’s girls exulted in one more team championship.
Bradshaw was the county’s top distance runner 40 years ago. Believe it or not, she was even faster in 1986 than Carson’s Kara Crotts, who is very fast, is now. Bradshaw already had won the 1600 and 3200 that day. She also had finished second by the margin of half an eyelash to teammate Miriam Karriker in the 800. Karriker’s time was recorded as 2:27.82. Bradshaw went in the books at 2:27.83.
Steve Beaver was the head track coach for the SR girls in 1986 and explained to the Post’s Ed Dupree why Bradshaw had been so grimly determined to win the 4×400 when the team championship had long been decided.
“It was her competitiveness and she was thinking about the other three girls on that 4×400 relay,” Beaver said. “Winners of events are all-county and South gives plaques to all-county athletes. One of the girls on that relay with Tracy hadn’t won an event. Tracy wanted to get her a plaque.”
East officially won that spectacularly close relay in 4:18.97. That time also would have won that event in the Robert Steele Rowan County Championships of 2026, although if you could have loaded the 1986 Mustangs into a time machine and dropped them off in Granite Quarry for this year’s county meet, they would have staged a thrilling race against the modern Mustangs. East won the 4×400 in this year’s county meet in 4:20.
Rowan high school athletes are obviously bigger now than they were in 1986. There have been serious advances in training knowledge, coaching knowledge, nutritional knowledge and sports medicine knowledge during the last 40 years. Still, the girls and boys of 1986 had advantages. They probably stayed more active in drive ways and back yards from sunrise to sundown in an era before smart phones, the Internet and Netflix.
The mid-1980s were a terrific era for South Rowan girls track and field.
The 1986 Raiders lacked a pole vaulter like East’s Lelu Hill because Rowan girls weren’t competing in the pole vault yet, but South had the the state’s best discus thrower, a top-notch shot putter and a bunch of determined athletes.
South raised banners for South Piedmont Conference championships in 1983, 1984 and 1985. The autumn of 1985 brought NCHSAA realignment, and the Raiders, the largest school in Rowan, moved up to the 4A Central Piedmont Conference.
That switch to taking on “city” competition didn’t faze that particular group of South track girls. They went out and beat the Winston-Salem and Greensboro schools for the CPC championship in the spring of 1986.
In their backyard, Rowan County, the Raiders ruled the roost for several years in that era. They won the county meets held in 1984, 1985 and 1986, although the other Rowan schools always had enough athletes to make them work for it.
Salisbury’s Lisa Taylor and North’s Mia Gibson were very special in that era.
Taylor was a Hornet sophomore in 1986. She scored 20 points in that county meet, as Salisbury finished second behind South. She took first place in both hurdling events and placed second in the triple jump and 200 meters.
Taylor was a state champion in 1986 in the 100 hurdles.
Taylor probably could have won the triple jump in this year’s Rowan County Championships, not by inches, but by several feet. South’s Brenda Brown was the triple jump champion in the county meet in 1986, but Taylor had some triple jumps of better than 37 feet that year.
Some of the meets in 1986 had enough athletes competing that girls had to run three races – a preliminary, a semifinal and then a final – in events such as the 100 hurdles and 100 and 200 meters. In the 1986 Central Carolina Conference Championships, Taylor competed in nine races to complete three events, plus she did some jumping on the side. That’s a difficult day, but she led the Hornets to their league title.
Salisbury’s current sprint queen Shekiya Woodruff is a little swifter in the 100 and 200 then Gibson was back then, but Gibson’s strongest race definitely was the 400 meters. Gibson could crank out 58s regularly and was a state champion in her favorite event. The teenage Gibson could have won the 400 in the 2026 Rowan County Championships by about 5 seconds.
Bradshaw’s 1600 and 3200 times in the 1986 county meet – 5:26 and 12:18 – are still among the best times the county has witnessed. Crotts won those two events in the 2026 Robert Steele Rowan County Championships in 5:56 and 12:26. Crotts, like Bradshaw, was competing in four grueling runs on the same day. Bradshaw anchored the 4×400 for her fourth event, as there was no 4×800 race for her to run in. Crotts ran the 4×800 for the Cougars.
Crotts’ winning 800 time in this year’s county meet was 2:29, just a shade behind the clockings that Raider teammates Karriker and Bradshaw registered in their literal head-to-head duel of 40 years ago.
In 1986, South’s Ellen Miller was on a different level from modern Rowan throwers. She threw 119 feet, 6 inches in the county meet and pushed that mark to 126 feet, 1 inch when she won the state championship.
South shot putter Belinda Harris won the 1986 county meet with an effort of 35 feet, 9 inches. She could have won this year’s county event by 5 feet.
There are also events where the current Rowan girls are posting better marks than their grandparents did in 1986. East’s Hill and North’s Ty’Tiana can produce stronger long jump marks than girls were doing 40 year ago. Clearing 5 feet won a lot of high jump meets in 1986, and that’s still the case. A successful jump at 4-10 won the county in 1986. That height also won the county in 2026.
The county has excellent female hurdlers, led by East’s Miley Carrico, Carson’s Tasean Perkins and North’s Clemons. Carrico’s PRs are almost identical to Taylor’s best times.
The other two winning relay times in the 1986 Rowan County Championships were posted by the Hornets – 52.9 in the 4×100 and 1:51.75 in the 4×200. Today’s strong, young relay girls – West’s 4×100 crew, which has been clocked in under 50 seconds, and North’s 4×200 unit- are definitely faster.
One more thing about the Rowan County track and field girls of 2026. They are young and they will keep getting better. Most of the standouts are in the junior class, and there are quite a few exciting freshmen.
