Six Pearl River County athletes captured Class 4A South State championships over the weekend while quite a few others also qualified for the state meet as well.

Picayune’s Taja Goff (shot put), Lauren Burks (400 meter run) and Danielle Camp (800 meter run) all took first place as did a pair of runners from Pearl River Central in Caston Dyle (800 meters) and Kyla Reagan (1,600 meters) while Poplarville’s Tyler Krutzfield (3,200 meters) also grabbed the top spot at the Gulfport Track Facility.

All six of those athletes will look to capture Class 4A State championships on Friday, when the overall state meet takes place at Pearl High School.

Picayune’s girls, thanks to those three first place performances by Goff, Burks and Camp as well as a second place finish by Hannah Nunez (high jump) finished third in the South State meet with 90 points behind McComb (114) and West Jones (104.5).

The top four participants in each event qualified to move on the the state track meet.

Other athletes for Picayune that qualified for the state meet are Micah Bergeron (second, pole vault), Marvin Mercado (third in both the 800 and 1,600 meter runs), Nunez (fourth, 200 meter dash), Jasmine Ducre (fourth, triple jump), Jonathan Moore (fourth, 300 meter hurdles) and Jeremiah Peters (fourth, long jump) as well as three relay teams in the boy’s 4X200 meter (Drew Cole, Justin Quinn, Iry Robertson and Igy Robertson) and girls 4X200 meter (Burks, Nunez, Tyisha Graves and Ketrice Stallings) as well as the boy’s 4X400 meter relay team (Peters, Quinn, Albert Richard and Sakina Bourgeois) that all finished in third place.

• For PRC, both Dyle and Reagan become the first two PRC thinclads to qualify for the state meet in at least six years.

• In addition, for Poplarville High, Chad Moore qualified in two events for the state meet by finishing second in both the 1,600 meters and the 3,200 meters. Also, Justin Raine (third, shot put), John Paul Formby (fourth, pole vault), Carolyn Toomer (third, pole vault) and Kayla Stricker (third, 1,600 meters) all qualified as well for Poplarville for the state meet.