Dragons breathe life into sprints
For the longest time, sprinting was something St. George’s runners did at the end of a mile run.
The Dragons, by hard-won reputation, are traditionally distance runners – a tradition they added to this past fall by winning the State 2B cross country team title.
So, how is that St. George’s has the state’s fastest 4x100-meter relay team going into the State 2B meet today and Saturday at Eastern Washington University?
It started, coach Terry Templeton said, with senior Abe Moland, the team’s only true sprinter for his first two seasons as a Dragon. Then came Blaine Nicholls last year to run the 200 and 400 meters.
“It just all came together this year,” Nicholls, a junior, said. “Abe was kind of our only sprinter for a while there. I ran with him in the 200 last year, but I couldn’t come close to him.”
Nicholls and Moland, along with juniors Tyler Evans and Kang-Ro Yoon, came together to set a school record in the relay, turning in a 44.41-second effort at last week’s district meet, easily qualifying for this week’s state meet.
But it wasn’t easy.
Nicholls got sick the day before the district meet.
“I think I may have gotten food poisoning,” he said. “Either that or I got a touch of the flu. Either way, I wasn’t feeling well at all. Once I got sick, I stopped thinking about running great times and started to focus on just making sure I qualified for state.”
Nicholls qualified in four events for this weekend’s state meet: the 200, 400 and both relays.
Moland, too, was thinking about anything but fast times on race day.
“I had to take two tests that day,” he said. “I had five hours of tests in AP economics.”
Moland could have opted out of the testing, Templeton said. However, the makeup exams are scheduled for the middle of the state meet.
Moland was almost two hours late getting to Spokane Falls Community College – in time to run his three events: the 100 meters and the two relays.
“We’ve all worked so hard to make sure that we make smooth handoffs,” Moland said. “Especially the last couple of weeks. I think once we got there (at SFCC) it all just took over and we ran a great race.”
“The best compliment my boys have gotten this year came from the Davenport coach, who said ‘I have not had to worry about St. George’s sprinters for 30 years!’ ” Templeton said.
The state-best time sets up what promises to be a blistering final heat at the State 2B meet.
Five 2B teams enter the state meet with sub-45-second times. St. George’s has the state’s best time of 44.41 seconds. Toutle Lake ran a hand-held 44.34 at its state qualifying meet. Riverside Christian owns a 44.64, Ritzville a 44.79 and La Salle a 44.94. Traditional state powerhouse Tacoma Baptist has run a 45.44.
In addition to the sprint relay, St. George’s also qualified a school-record 4x400 relay team for the state meet.
“It has been so great this year,” Moland said. “To not only have a group of guys to run with every day in practice, but to have these terrific relay teams, has been such a treat.”