Corredius Naylor is no longer a member of the Meridian High School track and field team, but that didn’t keep him away from his alma mater Thursday morning for a ceremony honoring his and others’ accomplishments last spring.

Naylor, who runs track as a freshman at Meridian Community College, was a senior for the Wildcats this past spring, when he won the Class 6A state title in the 800-meter run. He was joined by 4X800-meter relay team members Sa’Nya McPhail, Teknetra Batiste and Princess Grant — who are currently freshmen at MHS — at the school’s multipurpose building as they each received their state championship rings.

It was a proud moment for Naylor to return to MHS, and it brought back the same feelings of when he initially finished in first place back at the 6A state meet.

“I was ahead in the first lap and a half, and then someone passed me,” Naylor recalled. “Once I saw that, I gave it and extra kick and pushed it to the end. … It was a really good feeling. It was close at the end — I won by a 10th of a second, or maybe a third (of a second) — I was just really excited and jumping up and down.”

Now that he’s at MCC, Naylor said he feels it’s his duty to continue having success with track and field.

“I feel like I need to do something, like I owe this school something, so I should try to stand out there or wherever I go,” he said.

MHS track coach Regonal Walker said Naylor was always the type to keep pushing himself even beyond regular practice time.

“In every race, he’s going to give you his all,” Walker said. “He’s going to compete. Even in practice, he would run until he hurt himself. After practice, he wouldn’t go home, he would go to Bonita and run 5 miles. He trained extremely hard, and I’m glad it worked out for him.”

McPhail, Batiste and Grant were three of the four members of last season’s 4X800-meter relay team that finished first at the 6A state meet. The fourth member was alumna Kai Horne, who graduated this past spring and is now at Millsaps. Her father, Demetrius Hill, who is defensive line coach for the school’s football team, accepted Horne’s ring on her behalf.

McPhail ran the third leg for the relay team and said they fell behind early but were slowly able to catch up to the other runners. By the time Horne’s turn came around — Horne was the fourth leg — the race was close enough for Horne to overtake the other runners and win the race.

“She got us over the hump,” McPhail said. “She’s the fourth leg so she can pick us up.”

Like Naylor felt winning the 800-meter run, McPhail said it was awesome to win a championship for MHS. Aside from Horne, her and the other runners were only eighth graders at the time, so there are greater expectations going into this coming season.

“I was happy, because it was our first state championship,” McPhail said. “We just have to improve. We lost a good runner, and we need another leg so we can win state (in the spring).”

Walker said for the three who are still at MHS, to have a state championship to their names when they’re currently just ninth graders is a tremendous accomplishment.

“They all have their strengths and weaknesses, but they worked extremely hard,” Walker said. “When I got them, they were very young. We worked them during the cross country season, and they lifted weights, and when the outdoors season came, it all came together.”

While two individual championships are nice, Walker said he has even bigger goals in mind.

“It’s a small step toward winning a team title,” Walker said. “That’s the ultimate goal on the boys and girls side, to come home with a team championship. … We had a lot of kids who were very close. We had a (4X800-meter team) who finished second, and Naylor came in second in the long and triple jump. We learned a lot from that, and moving forward for this year, we’ll tweak a few things and take a new approach, and we’ll hopefully have a few more accolades to contribute to our program.”