Osceola’s Gaither earned a record six state crowns

By Rick Pedone
Sports Editor

How can someone so Tiny leave such large shoes to fill?

“It’s not that I’m that small. It’s short for Tynia,” Osceola County’s best high school sprinter, Tynia Gaither, said of her nickname after winning her fifth and sixth state championships in May.

The Osceola High sensation, all of 5 feet 3 inches tall, added more 100 meters (11.41) and 200 meters (23.75) Class 4A championships to her résumé at Winter Park’s Showalter Field. That made a total of six over her career: three 100 meters titles’ (2009-11), two 200 crowns (2010-11) and the 2009 4 x 100 relay championship.

Along the way Gaither, for the third time the Osceola News-Gazette Female Track Athlete of the Year, added state meet silver medals at 200 meters (2009) and the 4 x 100 relay (2011), where the Lady Kowboys ran 46.12 and had the fifth-best prep time in the country.

Gaither’s six state championships makes her the most successful athlete ever from Osceola County, surpassing the five championships Osceola High’s Brett Williams amassed in the shot put and discus from 1996-98.

“It’s going to be awhile before there’s another one like her here, if ever,” OHS girls track coach Eric Pinellas said. “She’s set the standard, you’d have to say.”

Gaither held the national high school record at 200 meters this year (23.17) and her time in the 100 was second only to Lake Wales’ Octavious Freeman, who clocked 10.21.

Gaither’s mother, Sabrina Johnson, was a championship sprinter at Boise State University. That, Gaither said, is why she is successful.

“I definitely get it from her. She’s been at the championship meets, she’s been in my situation, so she can tell me how it’s going to be,” Gaither said. “She talks to me all the time.”

Gaither competes for the Bahamas Junior Olympics program and is one of the island nation’s most promising athletes. She competed in Singapore last year and at the past two Carifta Games, an Olympics-style competition for Caribbean nations.

Gaither had additional incentives to add to her state championship medal collection (“I get my determination from my mother, for sure,” she said), after she was hobbled by muscle pulls in early May and seemed vulnerable to losing her Class 4A championships.

Suffering from a stress fracture in her right toe and a hamstring injury, Pinellas wasn’t sure how well Gaither could compete at the state meet.

“It was pretty ugly on Monday at practice (before the state meet),” Pinellas said. “I didn’t know what we had.”

But, Lauderdale Lakes Boyd Anderson junior Shayla Sanderson provided all the competitive spark Gaither needed by speaking about dethroning the Lady Kowboys sprinter.

“I heard it. I know there were some people doubting me,” Gaither said.

Gaither benefitted from deep tissue massages and a chiropractic adjustment before the championship races and delivered an 11.51 in the 100 meters preliminaries, a personal record.

“I hoped she didn’t shoot it all right there,” Pinellas said. “But then she ran good in the relay and the 200 prelims, so I said, ‘OK, we’re in business.”

Gaither, who missed the Class 4A state record by .01 seconds at 100 meters, said she could have gone faster.

“I don’t know what was going on with me after the first 20 meters, I kind of let up or something. That’s when (Sanderson, second at 11.45) got in front of me,” Gaither said. “I knew I had a lot left.”

Gaither won the 200 meters by a half-second over Sanderson.

She wanted to add the 4 x 100 relay gold medal to her collection, but Boyd Anderson ran 46.03 in the finals.

“We were too far behind,” she said. “If I had a couple more meters, I could have done it. This team is a lot faster than (the 2009 OHS state championship squad, which ran just over 47 seconds). I don’t know how we’re not the champions.”

She helped OHS place third in the Class 4A team standings, its best finish ever, but Pinellas knows it will be difficult to maintain that position in the future.

“That’s a sure 20 points, usually more, that is walking out the door,” he said. “It’s not easy to replace that.”

Gaither placed third at the adidas Dream 100 sprint in June, a race that brought together nine of the fastest high school female sprinters in the country.

She is preparing for her freshman season at Georgia under Coach George Cleare, also the Bahamas national coach.

Most of the  nation’s elite  programs recruited Gaither.

“I’ll probably be concentrating more on the 200 meters there. That’s a little better event for me,” she said. “But, I’m going to miss running here (at OHS). It was a lot of fun running for Coach Pinellas. He kept me headed mostly in the right direction. He helped me a lot.”