Bigger and faster? Star athlete helps quarterback Ontario boys to district track title
ONTARIO — He was afraid track season would interfere with some of the noticeable strength gains he’s made for his burgeoning football career.
Instead, Bodpegn Miller is still doing plenty of heavy lifting. It’s just that he’s doing it as a sprinter for an Ontario boys team that followed up last week’s title performance in the Mid-Ohio Athletic Conference meet with a Division II district championship on the home oval Saturday.
DIVISION I TRACK AND FIELD: Still ridin’ high: Lex boys win district track title as encore to OCC crown
Running the 200-meter dash for the first time since ninth grade, his hair flying in rhythm with his feet, the 6-3 junior powered his way from lane 6 to a first-place time of 22.14, beating 100 champ Jacob Chambers of Galion in the process.
Miller might want to share video of that race with all of the Division I football scouts whose attention he has attracted as a wide receiver/safety prospect at the next level. Ever since he earned second team All-Ohio honors as a quarterback last fall and showed out at a couple of prep combines, his reputation has grown as fast as his upper torso.
Miller’s success on the track can only help.
“(Thursday’s) prelims were the first time I’ve run the 200 since my freshman year,” he said. “I’m mostly in the 400, but I’ve had hammy (hamstring) issues. I knew I could do it. I’ve run track since I was seven years old. So I definitely felt I could run (the 200). I had to get out fast, quick, keep my form.
“Thursday (in prelims), I got out of whack with my form. I knew as long as I kept it, I could finish first.”
There’s no letting your mind wander when Chambers is only a couple lanes away. Before losing to Miller, Chambers had been on a nice little winning streak, sweeping the 100 and 200 at the MOAC meet before taking first in the 100 Saturday.
“(He) makes you focus more on your form,” Miller said. “You can’t take any aspect of the race for granted. You’ve got to do everything perfect, perfect, perfect. When you go against guys like Chambers, that’s what you have to do to get it done.”
Miller also anchored the 4x2 and 4x1 relays to qualifying berths at the Lexington regional Thursday and Saturday as Ontario scored 102 points for first-year coach and alum Rachel Miller to win the district title by 16 points over Huron.
Other individual firsts for the Warriors came from sophomore Jace Young in the 800 (1:55.64) and junior Dean Morrison in the 3200 (10:03.78). Those two also ran on Thursday’s title-winning 4x800 crew with Xavier Trent and Austin Boughton (8:04.88), while Young collaborated with Trent, Aiden Fox and Landen Foltz to close out the meet Saturday with a first in the 4x400 (3:26.80).
Young cruised to a five-second victory in the 800
“I wanted my teammate (Boughton) to qualify for regionals, so I basically went out as hard as I could and tried to pull him with me and then out-kick everybody at the end,” Young said. “He got (third), so it worked.”
Morrison led the 3,200 from wire to wire, which wasn’t his intention.
“I guess it was my day, but I definitely want someone in front of me to chase so that I can run faster,” he said. “I got scared at the end and thought someone was going to come up on me like I usually do.”
A number of meet records were set Thursday and Saturday, which makes sense given the beautiful weather on Saturday and the fact that district records did not carry over from previous sites when the meet moved to Ontario a few years ago.
The Lex girls, who dropped from Division I to II last season, repeated as district champs, outscoring runner-up Huron 123 to 94.5. There are always major contributions up and down coach Michelle Smith’s lineup, but junior Emily Thomas, in particular, had herself a day.
She won the 300 hurdles (45.88) and 200 dash (26.06) with little rest between and anchored the winning 4x200 (1:44.29). And even though she had to settle for second in the 100, she avenged that loss to Shelby sophomore Princess Timko in the 200.
You rarely see athletes double in the 300s and 200 because there’s only the 800 in between, but that didn’t stop Thomas.
“I just started doing that with her at the Marion Night Invitational and then the (Ohio Cardinal Conference) meet,” Smith said. “She’s in good shape. I didn’t want her to give up the 200 because she’s so good at it, so we just went for it.
“She was a little nervous about doing it, but then the last couple of weeks she had some success with it and now I think she enjoys it. It’s almost like the 300 is a warm up for her and the 200 is less than 300, so she just flies.”
It was the first time that Thomas won both of those races in the same meet.
“She had a fantastic day,” Smith said. “She’s a special athlete, for sure.”
Thomas never ran the 300 hurdles until this season. She was strictly dashes and sprint relays in the past.
“It looked like so much fun, maybe I should try it,” she said. “There was an (open) spot for someone to run it. Now I’ve got the rhythm down.”
Allison Laury, Olyvia Stoots and Makenna Arnholt joined Thomas in the 4x2 and Lex also got a first Thursday from Elyana Weaver in the high jump (5-2).
Other district champs included Galion’s Miranda Stone in the discus (146-6), Clear Fork’s Julian Mills in the shot put (49-4) and Shelby’s Madison Henkel in the long jump (17-5) and Marshall Moore in the 1600 (4:26.77).
Timko beat Thomas by a 12.6 to 12.76 margin in the 100 and she also ran on Shelby’s winning 4x100 relay (49.49).
Moore was looking for redemption after a fifth-place showing in the 1600 under miserable, raining conditions in the MOAC meet.
“I wasn’t very proud of that race,” he said. “I don’t think (bad weather) is an excuse for a bad race. Everyone ran in the same conditions and I just didn’t handle it as well. But I’m really happy with this race. It was a PR for me. I was mad at myself for last week and didn’t want to make the same mistakes.”
This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Bigger and faster? Star athlete helps quarterback Ontario boys to district track title
