New venue, same dominating performances by Marlee Burkley.
Although the pentathlon state championships for the TSSAA Spring Fling moved to new sites this year after more than two decades at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, the Signal Mountain senior remained firmly in control of the title of being the area’s top overall female athlete.
In her last appearance in the competition, Burkley improved her times and distances in each event on the way to a third straight Class AA championship Wednesday at Hardin Valley Academy in Knoxville. Her final tally was 3,615 points, which beat MLK’s Harper Gibson by 774 points and was 601 more than her own winning score from last year at MTSU.
“Right before our final event of the day (the 800-meter run), I started to get emotional, just thinking about the journey to get here and realizing as a senior that this was my last time to compete in a pentathlon,” said Burkley, who won four of the five pentathlon individual events for a second straight year. “My confidence was high going in, just from the experience of having won it before, but I really wanted to go out and perform at my best.
“I was really proud to be able to finish strong and get my team off to a good start.”