Hillsborough’s Green named Shields Award winner

Posted May 14, 2012 by Bill Ward

Updated May 14, 2012 at 10:29 PM

Hillsborough junior Jeremiah Green, the Class 3A state champion in the triple jump and the national high school leader in the event, has been named this year’s recipient of the Bill Shields Award as Hillsborough County’s top track and field athlete of the season.

Green will be presented the trophy at next week’s spring sports awards ceremony at the school district’s headquarters in downtown Tampa.

The Shields trophy dates back to 1961 and is awarded to the top male or female athlete that season, as determined by Doug Shields, son of the honor’s founder, Bill Shields. The list of past winners is an impressive array of county track standouts, most of whom went on to enjoy exceptional college careers in the sport.

Among the past winners are current Florida State sprint star Dentarius Locke, former Stanford University distance running all-American Rolf Steier of Berkeley Prep, King High product Charles Johnson, who won four state titles at the state meet his senior year and went on to compete in the Olympic Trials, former FSU discus and shot put all-American Garrett Johnson of Tampa Baptist, who also competed in the trials, and the first female winner (1983), former Leto distance runner Lori Littell, who also ran for the Seminoles.

Green captured this month’s state triple jump title with a mark of 50 feet, 3.5 inches. That jump is the nation’s best official mark because all others performed without wind gauge readings are not eligible for the U.S. high school national leaders list compiled by the National Scholastic Sports Foundation’s Jim Spier.

With that performance, Green has been invited to next month’s New Balance Outdoor Nationals, as well as the Caribbean Scholastic Invitational, June 1-2 in Puerto Rico.