The Salem and Glenvar High School teams as well as the local middle schoolers will converge on William Fleming High School this weekend for the 52nd Annual Haley Toyota Cosmopolitan Invitational Track and Field Meet. The meet will be held on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, May 4, 5 and 6.

The track meet, which is officially sanctioned by the Virginia High School League, has become the largest scholastic track meet in Southwest Virginia with boys’ and girls’ teams participating from Middle, Junior and Senior High Schools throughout our area.  Cosmo 2017 will include athletes from 40 area schools this year with a total expected participation of over 1,800 students.

The Meet is in its sixth year back where it began.  The First Annual Cosmopolitan Invitational Track & Field Meet was held on Saturday, May 7, 1966 at William Fleming High School.  There were four schools in the field: Addison High School, Jefferson High School, Patrick Henry High School and William Fleming High School.  The Meet attracted 115 boys for 15 events and was won by William Fleming.

The Cosmopolitan Club of Roanoke will award $3,000 scholarships to an outstanding senior boy and girl participating in this year’s meet.  Including this year’s scholarships, the Club has awarded over $72,000 in scholarships since 2000.

Cosmo 2017 gets underway at 3 pm Thursday afternoon with Middle School track & field events.  Junior and Senior Division track and field events will be held at William Fleming on Friday afternoon beginning at 3 pm. Competition resumes at 9 am Saturday morning at Fleming when the Senior field events begin.  Track events finals for Middle Schools and Junior and Senior Divisions will begin at 11:30 am.

The Parade of Athletes marches at 11:00 am Saturday, followed by running events for all scholastic divisions.  Closing Award Ceremonies are expected to conclude by 6:30 pm on Saturday.

Admission is $5 for adults and $2 for students.  There is no charge for preschoolers and parking is free.

The Salem team ran in the Blacksburg Invitational at Blacksburg High School last Saturday. The Salem girls were third overall as the host Bruins took both the boys’ and girls’ team titles among 16 schools that scored.

ShaCoya Price had a big day with 3rd in the 100, 2nd in the triple jump, 4th in the100, 6th in the 200 and first in the long jump. ShaCoya also set a new meet record and facility record with her long jump of 17′ 7.5 “.

Other medal winners for the Salem girls included Janae Blakeney with 3rd in the 100 and 1st in the 200; Mia Cromer tied for 2nd in the high jump; Selma Marunica was 3rd in the discus and the 4×800 relay team of Madison Baxley, Carolina Bowen, Alyssa Ingerson and Alexis Stover placed 2nd.

For the boys, Salem’s 4×800 relay team of Aiden Sable, Elijah Hairston, Kirill Daniel and Christian Crawley took sixth.

Glenvar ran in a meet at Salem with the Spartans and Bassett last week, and this week the Spartans will run at Hidden Valley in a five team meet. Glenvar will warm up for the Cosmo with a meet at Giles on Wednesday.