Boys track athlete of the year

By Ted Allen

Published: May 3, 2008

One hundred and ten percent.That’s what Brookville senior Ethan Nixon tried to bring to the table every time he competed for the defending Group AA indoor track and field state champion Bees.

The extra 10 percent was what it took for Nixon to hold off Heritage’s Corey Calloway on the last lap of the Region III meet-ending 1,600-meter relay, won by Brookville despite controversial contact by the Bees on the second leg.

It’s what Nixon needed to defend his title in the 55 hurdles, by one-hundredth of a second over Broadway’s Brett Olinger, and to add a high jump crown by clearing 6-foot-6, despite battling a flu bug the week of the Group AA state meet.

“Being sick and everything, I did just about as much as I could have done,” said Nixon, The News & Advance all-area boys indoor track and field athlete of the year for the second year in a row.

“I had to do what I could to conserve energy.”

However, after expending 110 percent of his strength by placing in four individual events and running a leg of the 800 relay, which finished runner-up to Heritage’s state championship team, Nixon pulled himself out of the pivotal 1,600 relay.

Despite running its fastest time of the season in that event, Brookville finished fourth, and came up two points short of repeating as team champions. Western Albemarle, which passed Christiansburg on the last lap to win the final event, took the team title in dramatic fashion.

“Two points isn’t a lot,” Nixon said. “It’s one place in one event. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough to run the final leg of the 4x400 and have what it would taken to win it. Western Albemarle stepped up and they took it. They fought for it.”

Nixon, who will continue his career as a hurdler and jumper at Clemson next year, has already hyperextended himself, and his knee, this season. He re-aggravated an injury first suffered while triple jumping 45 feet to finish runner-up at last spring’s Group AA state outdoor meet at Harrisonburg, sidelining him for the past three weeks.

“It was the exact same thing I did at outdoor states last year,” Nixon said. “It happened again. It wasn’t as bad as the first one.”

He returned to practice, putting strenuous activity on the knee for the first time last Thursday and plans to compete for the first time in nearly a month in Friday’s Elite Six All-Area Invitational at Brookville, where he will inevitably give it 110 percent, even if he isn’t at 100 percent.