DES MOINES — “All you can do is go out and run the best you can — there is no playing defense in track,” Perry head coach Ben Coy said. “You can’t do anything about the other guy — all you can do is your own best.”
Perry did just that Friday at the state track meet, slashing nearly eight full seconds and improving their seeded spot by 10 places in the distance medley while taking 3.85 ticks off their 4×400 time.
While both were outstanding efforts, both were also stopped frustrating close to earning state medals.
The distance medley team of Kato Dougan, Kaleb Olejniczak, Reece Dunlap, and Brandon Kenyon finished in 3 minutes, 36.33 seconds, only .04 behind Benton Community, who claimed eighth place in 3:36.29.
The 4×400 unit of Olejniczak, Zachary Thompson, Dunlap, and Kenyon clocked in at 3:26.37, just .24 behind North Polk (3:26.13), who claimed the eighth and final qualifying spot for today’s finals. Perry was fourth last year in 3:23.87.
“Reece and Brandon (both seniors) were pretty upset about not making the finals, but I told them ‘you just ran on the fourth-fastest 4×4 in school history’ so they have nothing to hang their heads about,” Coy said.
He noted both had also run at the 2017 state qualifying meet and in both the state preliminaries and finals last year. Those relays posted the third-fastest, second-fastest, and school record times, meaning the seniors had been a part of the four swiftest clockings in PHS history.
According the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the average eye blinks once every four seconds, with each blink lasting, on average, one-fifth of a second. If so, the combined .28 seconds that kept Perry from a pair of state medals happened in less than two blinks of an eye.
“Nothing you can do,” Coy reiterated. “They need to think about of how great they ran to even come that close. The d-med came in seeded 19th and finished ninth and the 4×4 went from 12th to ninth — hard to be upset about that.”
Perry competes three times today. The sprint medley unit of Dougan, Olejniczak, Dunlap, and Kenyon will run at 9:50 a.m. They enter the timed finals seeded 13th in 1:35.84.
Sid Vancil will run in the 800 finals at 10:30 a.m. as the 19 seed (2:28.32) with Kenyon following in 800 (at approximately 11:10 a.m.). He is seeded eighth, in 2:01.48, and was 13th last year in 2:01.98.
