Out of the blue
Deji Adebayo isn’t afraid to admit how much he didn’t – and still doesn’t – know about running fast.
At a meet in Seattle a week ago, the Community Colleges of Spokane freshman was winning the 100 meters, and convincingly so, when he dipped at the finish line and killed the engine. Which wouldn’t have been a big deal, except that the line he chose as his stopping point was about 10 meters short of the actual finish.
A runner from Simon Fraser University zoomed past. So did Kenjamine Jackson of Highline Community College. A third runner followed. Just .04 of a second separated first place from fourth, but even rookies don’t revel in fourth place.
“It would have been my best race ever,” said Adebayo. “The worst part is that we had the guys from Highline in the same race who are right next to me in the conference standings. It was the first time I got to race against them – and then I mess up.”
Ah, but atonement might be right around the corner. The Sasquatch host the NWAACC championships today and Tuesday at Spokane Falls, giving Adebayo an opportunity to apply this latest of many lessons.
Of course, before someone could teach him how to finish, he had to start.
Coaches at Rogers High School badgered him for years to do just that, but Adebayo was devoted to soccer – which, maddeningly, is a spring sport in Washington, and so the conflict kept him watching track meets from an adjacent field. It wasn’t until he talked his way into coach Larry Beatty’s track class at CCS last winter that he ever put on a pair of spikes, which you could say makes him one of the slowest fast guys ever.
How fast? His season best of 10.78 seconds in the 100 meters is the best in the NWAACC this spring, and though it was aided by an excessive wind, he has a slew of other clockings in the 10.85-10.95 range, all accomplished as on-the-job training.
“We get a bunch of these guys every year,” Beatty said, “who show up and say they either used to do track in high school or whose friends told them they were fast and want to come out. Usually they realize pretty quick that they’re in over their heads. But for every seven or eight who don’t do anything, one shows up and it’s, ‘Hello.’ “
Adebayo had intended to play soccer at CCS, but developed some hamstring problems. He started working out with Beatty’s team winter quarter, but hadn’t run in a meet until sprint coach Claude Defour saw him chase down a couple of teammates in practice in late January.
“So we take him to the last Idaho indoor meet and he crushes all of our guys in the 60,” Beatty recalled. “And in the 200 he runs 22.6 with a standing start.”
A standing start?
“Well, it might as well have been,” Adebayo said. “I didn’t know what I was doing at all. I didn’t know how to even set up the blocks. But I still beat up on some people and that kept me going, because I wasn’t sure I was going to stick with it very long.”
With Defour’s help – drilling starts over and over, working on arm movement and the counter-intuitive notion of relaxing rather than tensing up to run faster – Adebayo has brought his 100 time down nearly a second from his first race of the spring.
“I don’t think he understands the kind of speed he has,” Defour said. “If he runs 10.5, I won’t be shocked.”
Neither would those coaches at Rogers, who had Adebayo’s little brother, Sean, on the team – and who now see Deji running with the likes of Jackson, last year’s State 4A 100 and 200 champion at Kentwood, only to wonder what they might have had.
If it’s any consolation, Adebayo wonders, too.
“They were always telling me I was making the wrong choice,” Adebayo said, “but soccer was my first love. But there’s always regrets. Every time I saw a track meet going on, there were a lot of days I really wanted to try it out and see where I stood.
“To be honest, I’m shocked it’s gone so well. I thought I’d be getting my butt handed to me – that I’d be the slowest one on the team. It hasn’t worked out that way.”
Pirates off to nationals
Whitworth managed to get four of its six provisional qualifiers into the NCAA Division III championships starting Thursday in Lisle, Ill., led by 10,000-meter specialist Kristi Dickey, who’s ranked sixth in her event. She’ll be joined by heptathlete Sarah Marken, javelin thrower Angela Florence and hammer thrower Derrick Dewindt.
Marken helped her cause by scoring 4,470 points in the Willamette last-chance meet last week, moving her into the national top 10. But the last week did no favors for 800-meter runner Brandon Howell of Clarkston, who was clinging to a spot only to see nine runners improve their qualifying marks at last-chance events.