``We bust on her all the time for being Ronnie's little sister,'' Overbrook girls' coach Ben Moore said of Onya, who will attend Wisconsin in the fall. ``She takes it in stride. He's the most easygoing guy you'd ever want to meet. She's equally as easygoing, and she'll truly do anything you ask of her.''
Dayne's work ethic, Moore said, is perhaps the biggest reason she could place in the discus in both the Group 4 sectional and state meets this year. Moore said Dayne's goal is to be throwing in the 120s by the time sectionals and states roll around. Her efforts, he said, should be aided by the impending arrival of warm weather.
``She's come close [to 120] a couple of times in practice and so forth,'' Moore said. ``We haven't had any real good weather yet.''
Second to none. It was the kind of weekend that Bridgeton coach Bob Cwik envisioned for Nacole Moore now that the junior no longer toils in the shadow of Melinda Boykin.
Thursday, Moore finished third in the high school shot put in the Penn Relays with a throw of 43-10 1/2. Two days later, she helped the two-time defending Group 2 state champion win its first major meet of the season. Moore had the top shot (41-2) and discus (123-4) throws of the afternoon as Bridgeton won both relay events on the way to a narrow victory (74-72) over Kingsway in the Rowland Relays.
``I think [Moore] had the ability to step ahead of Melinda last year,'' Cwik said, ``but I think she felt uncomfortable about doing it.''
Boykin, who won a school-record 14 state titles (indoor and outdoor) and holds the South Jersey record in the shot (44-5 1/4), is now at Villanova, and Moore has wasted little time in taking charge.
She and senior sprinter Nadia Davy are the team captains, and Cwik said the Georgia-bound Davy is the quiet one who prefers to lead by example.
And Moore?
``She tells it like it is,'' Cwik said. ``Nacole Moore is like the den mother. When she speaks, everyone listens. [Throwers] kind of stay in their own world, but she comes up and sees what's going on [at the track] and she tells them about it.''
You can go home again. After transferring to Cherokee after her freshman year, Yvette Murry has returned to Edgewood this year and bolstered a pair of hurdle-relay teams that were among the fastest in the country last year.
``She's running spectacular times right now,'' Edgewood coach Rob Ayers said.
Murry ran a 14.49-second split in the shuttle hurdles Saturday to help the Eagles break a Rowland Relays record with a time of 1 minute, 4.1 seconds. The senior also ran on the 3x400 hurdle team that broke the record that Edgewood had set last year in the Rowland Relays (3:19.1).
The record-breaking afternoon came two days after Murry helped Edgewood win the small-school 4x400 in the Penn Relays and break a school record that had stood since 1984.
The record the Eagles are really shooting for is the national mark in the shuttle hurdles (59.2 by William Penn of Philadelphia). Ayers said the team hopes to make a run at the record at the East Coast Relays on May 17. Edgewood ran a 61.94 in the shuttle hurdles in last year's East Coast Relays.
