CHICAGO — Trentavis Friday of Cherryville High School has added another prestigious award, this one national, to his long list of accomplishments.
Friday has been named as the Gatorade National Boys Track and Field Athlete for 2013-14. He was earlier named the North Carolina Athlete of the Year in the sport. The Gatorade Company is in its 29th year of honoring the nation’s best high school athletes, in collaboration with USA TODAY High School Sports.
The 6-foot-2, 165-pound athlete, who has now graduated from Cherryville and enrolled at Florida State University, won three individual state championships and anchored the winning 4×400-meter relay quartet at the North Carolina High School Athletic Association Class 1A state meet this spring, leading the Ironmen to a second-place finish as a team. Friday took gold in the 100-meter dash with a time of 10.59 seconds, the 200-meter dash in 20.95 and the 400-meter run in 47.87. The New Balance Nationals Indoor champion and the NBN meet indoor record-holder in both the 60 and 200, he also captured the 200-meter crown at the recent New Balance Nationals Outdoor championships. Friday’s season-bests of 10.17 in the 100 and 20.33 in the 200 both rank as the nation’s No. 1 performances among prep competitors in 2014 at the time of his selection.
Friday has maintained a B average in the classroom. In addition to serving on the Cherryville High school yearbook and school newspaper staffs, he has volunteered locally for two years on behalf of the First Wesleyan Church’s feed-the-homeless initiative. He has also donated his time as part of his school’s morning-announcements team and has worked with special needs students at the Webb Street School.
“He’s worked hard and stayed healthy, and he’s just a special runner,” said Cherryville head coach Keith Fox. “He can do anything. He could go out and run a 1:54 in the 800 if we wanted him to. He put in a lot of time in the offseason, worked in the weight room. We knew he was capable of a season like this.”
The Gatorade Player of the Year program annually recognizes one winner in the District of Columbia and each of the 50 states that sanction high school football, girls volleyball, boys and girls cross country, boys and girls basketball, boys and girls soccer, baseball, softball, and boys and girls track & field, and awards one National Player of the Year in each sport. The selection process is administered by the Gatorade high school sports leadership team in partnership with USA TODAY High School Sports, which work with top sport-specific experts and a media advisory board of accomplished, veteran prep sports journalists to determine the state winners in each sport.
