Brookville dominates in Seminole District track championships

By Ted Allen

Published: May 14, 2008

Except for the meet-ending 1,600-meter relay, which Heritage’s boys ran away with, tight finishes characterized Wednesday’s second and final day of the Seminole District track and field championships at Brookville.
Not surprisingly, Bees senior Ethan Nixon was right in the middle of two of the closest races on the night.
He pulled out both — the 300 intermediate hurdles and 400 relay, which he anchored — by the slimmest of margins to bolster Brookville’s landslide team triumph. The Bees (211 points) defended their team title over the Pioneers (97) and Amherst (88).
It’s been both a physically challenging and emotionally draining season for Nixon, who has overcome a hamstring injury to return to top form on the track while his father Mike battled double-pneumonia and that required lung surgery to make it out in a wheelchair to see Ethan compete.
“I’m here to support him and he’s here to support me,” Ethan Nixon said.
He gave all the spectators in attendance, and his competitors on the track, more than his share of excitement.
Filling in for Hugh Oulds on the 400 relay, Nixon took the baton with a 10-meter lead on Heritage senior Shawn Sutton as they approached the final straightaway. Sutton closed the gap in a hurry, but Nixon held him off at the finish line by 15 hundredths of a second to win in a new school and meet record time of 43.34 seconds.
“I could feel him coming on,” Nixon said. “He’s one of the best sprinters out here and one of the best sprinters in the state. It was probably inches that the race was decided by.”
“That was the tightest race of my life,” Sutton added. “He got me by a half step or two.”
The 300 hurdles was even closer as Nixon leaned and collapsed across the finish line to overtake Staunton River’s James Bell by one-hundredth of a second in 40.07, with track rash to show off as battle scars.
“I knew in the last curve, he had me by a good one and a half to two steps and I came out of it and attacked every hurdle,” Nixon said. “If I didn’t open it up and give it everything I had, I wasn’t going to win. I had to gut it out to the finish line. That was the last race I was going to run on this track and I wanted to go out with a bang.”
Heritage’s Corey Calloway overcame a hamstring pull from Tuesday’s 200 trials to edge Liberty’s Ryne Bollinger by 0.03 seconds in 49.78.
Brookville seniors Jacob Arthur and Jake Wilson finished 1-2 in both the 1,600 (4:30.75-4:35.66) and the 3,200 (9:56.67-10:05.53).
“It’s awesome to have him to run with,” Wilson said. “You just focus on following him all of the time. We kind of push each other.”
“We went out super fast,” added Arthur, who returned from a stress fracture in his right ankle in December.
For the girls, Brookville broke open an eight-point lead on Amherst after Tuesday’s first day to defend its crown, 147¼ to 102 for the Lancers and 99¼ for third-place Heritage.
Two of the most competitive races came in the distance events between Heritage’s Laura Rapp and Brookville’s Janel Reeves. On Tuesday, Rapp held off a spirited challenge from Reeves to win the 3,200 in 11:02.87, just 1.4 seconds in front of her closest rival.
“It was definitely a tough battle,” Rapp said. “That was probably the tightest 3,200-meter race I’ve ever run in my life. It was intense. It was good competition and a friendly rivalry.”
On the meet’s second day, which was moved up from today to avoid potential rain delays, Rapp competed rather than playing in Heritage’s soccer game at Liberty and completed the distance sweep, edging Reeves in the 1,600 before running away from the field in the 800, her signature event.