Over the past decade, Saint Stephen’s track and field has set a new standard for excellence, qualifying 69 student-athletes for the FHSAA state championships – including 12 in both 2017 and 2023, the most in school history in a single season.

The program today features the most highly decorated athlete in school history in senior Keymani Dillingham. As a junior in 2025, Dillingham won the Falcons’ first-ever individual state titles, capturing the 100-meter and 400-meter hurdles at the 1A meet. She also finished third in the shot put. It was the culmination of the promise she showed as a freshman, when she registered top-five finishes in the same three events: shot put (2nd), 400-meter hurdles (4th) and 100-meter hurdles (5th).

The Falcons’ current run of state success got its start in 2015. Then-sophomore sprinter Jordon Murrell and senior distance runner Andrew Zandemenego were the first two SSES boys to qualify for the state meet in an individual event in more than a decade. Murrell (200 meters) and junior Andrew Csubak (800 meters) kept that run alive in 2016, finishing seventh and sixth, respectively. Both went on to represent the building legacy of SSES track and field at the collegiate level – Csubak at the University of Tampa and Murrell at Webber International University.

The 2017 boys team captured its first-ever district and regional titles, then followed those performances with a heart-stopping effort at the state meet that earned them a co-championship with Fort Lauderdale Westminster Academy. The Falcons went into the final event of the two-day meet at IMG Academy – the 1,600-meter relay – needing to finish no worse than second to earn the Class 1A state title, and they delivered. SSES earned enough points to win the team championship despite not taking the top spot in any event.