Rylee Watson clears a hurdle during 2017’s Andy Summers Invitational at Tift County High. Fifteen teams are set to participate this year.

TIFTON — There are quite a variety of teams coming to Tifton Saturday morning for the annual Andy Summers Invitational track meet.

“Big schools, small schools, private schools,” said Tift County track coach Gregg Segraves.

Fifteen squads will be in town, most of them from the southern part of the state for Tift County’s first competitive meet of the season. Events begin at 10 a.m.

The larger schools attending are Tift, Valdosta and Ware County. Smaller ones include Baker County, Terrell, Pelham, Turner County, Cook and Fitzgerald. There are two private schools in the mix, Highland Christian and Valwood, both located in Lowndes County. Only one school from outside of the immediate area is scheduled to come, Central High of Macon.

Competition will be tough. Fitzgerald’s boys were third at the state track meet in 2017 as a Class AA school. Turner County was fifth in Class A (public). Highland, Segraves heard, had a good girls’ program.

“I think it’s going to be a good track meet,” he said.

The 15 teams competing this year are almost double the number (nine) from 2017. Eight of those schools are back this year.

Despite the increase in schools, no other teams from Region 1 will be here Saturday; Lowndes and Colquitt County are competing in Bainbridge at the Larry Clark Track and Field Invitational. Not that Segraves minds. He said he actually prefers not to compete region rivals so soon.

The Blue Devils and Lady Devils got a chance to warm up for the season last Friday with a intra-squad scrimmage.

Chad Williams did set a personal best in the shot put with a 49’ throw, said Segraves, and Emily Golden was not far off her personal bests in distance events.

Tyler Ajiero won the 100-meter run and Quan Mathis finished in good time in the 400.

Segraves said the teams were still improving. With last week’s scrimmage, he said he was hopeful that “some of them got some of the bad times out of the way.”

At last year’s Andy Summers Invitational, Golden won the 1,600-meter run and the 3,200.

Mary Alex Anders had the top height in high jump and Kiera Green won shot put. The Devils had winners in the 400 meters with Quan Mathis and pole vault with Jacob Redd. Mike Jones won the 110 and 300 hurdles. All of these competitors are back for this year’s meet.

Segraves offers no predictions for Saturday.

“That’s why we run,” he said.

After Saturday’s meet, Tift County will spend the remainder of the month on the road. They will be at Waycross March 10, at Fitzgerald March 16 and at Lowndes March 24. There will also be a pair of quad meets held locally, one March 21 and another March 28.

The next big meet in Tifton will be the Region 1-AAAAAAA meet, which will be held April 18.