#1 - Welcome to the Michtrack Newsletter!

Michigan Shines At Indoor Nationals

New Balance: Six state records fell as Michigan showed its stuff in the sparkling new Track at New Balance. Kellen Kimes (see interview below) made the biggest impression, taking the national title in the weight throw, breaking the state record with his 78-4.25 on his last throw.

Shamar Heard set a new state 400 record with his 47.64 heat. He also went 0.02 faster in the final (47.62) to finish 3rd. On the 4 × 200 he blistered a 20.82 anchor on a state record, he and his 16 Ways teammates (all from Chippewa Valley HS) hitting 1:27.69.

The state 4×8 record fell hard, thanks to Six Mile TC (all Northville students). A 7:48.64 took more than 3 seconds off the old best and placed them 5th. The splits—Brandon Latta 1:57.15, Brock Malaikal 2:01.07, David Whitaker 1:56.68, Brendan Herger 1:53.75.

Last but certainly not least, let me call out Braxton Brann’s amazing triple: 60, 200, 60H. On Saturday he had heats of 6.79 PR, 21.16 STATE RECORD, and 7.93 PR. Here’s how his Sunday went:
9:07am - 60 semi - 6.80 - misses final by less than 1/100th
9:25am - 60H semi - 7.85 PR (=7 ever)
11:38am - 200 final - 21.14 STATE RECORD
12:26pm - 60H final - 7.90
And he still had the 4×4, where he and his Ann Arbor TC teammates placed 8th in 3:18.64, the No. 2 time in history. 16 Ways was 9th in 3:19.14, the No. 4 time (Heard on anchor at 47.82).

On the girls’ side, Motor City TC placed 2nd in the sprint medley, its 3:59.96 the No. 3 Michigan time ever. In the 4×4, the squad placed 5th in 3:49.46.

Purple TC grabbed 6th in the distance medley at 11:56.35 and then 5th in the 4 × 800 at 9:10.56.

Motor City’s Neveah Burns set an 8th grade state record 55.22 in the 400 heats, then made All-American in the final (55.61). She was the only middle schooler in the meet to win that honor. Teammate Nonah Waldron took 7th in the 60H at 8.62 (after rounds of 8.64 and 8.53).

Nike Nationals: The big story from the Armory was Hunter Jones winning the 2 mile in a state record 8:51.40 then coming back the next day to nip his own state record in the 5000 at 14:20.54.

Abigail Russell of Allen Park placed 3rd in the shot put with the three farthest throws by a Michigander this year, topped by a 44-7.5 which makes her No. 18 in history. She also just missed All-Am status with her weight throw 7th.

Other All-Americans included a trio of 5th-placers in Chloe Nixon (5000, 17:38.63), Milena Chevallier (HJ, 5-7) and Faith Moore (WT, 51-8.25 11th grade record). And Nathan Levine was 6th in the HJ at 6-6.75.

adidas Nationals: A much weaker meet overall, but Damarcus Rouse ran well in the 200 (22.54) and 400 (48.93). He and his Elite Performance teammates ran 1:30.60 in the 4×2.

Jones And That 2M Record

The stat purist in me would have had Hunter Jones race in Boston, if only because there he might have cleared up a messy situation with our state record in the 2 mile. In Boston, the 2M was won in 8:43.24 with 8 guys faster than Jones’ 8:51.40 (in a race with no one else under 9:00). Had Jones been in Boston, fighter that he is, I think he surely would have run much faster than 8:51.

Here’s the statistical mess: Jones has an oversized 3200 PR of 8:45.46, not eligible for a record. The state’s fastest legal-track 3200 is Dathan Ritzenhein’s 8:47.4 at CMU in a race against relay teams—not eligible for a record. The next best 3200 time is a converted 8:49.85 by Ritz—but conversions can’t be records. So that meant the state record for both 3200 and 2M (18+ meters farther) was Ritz’s 8:52.94 to win the Nike Indoor 2M in 2000. Hunter cut 1.54 off that mark, but had he placed in the top 4 at New Balance, which I believe he could have done—the whole records mess would have been cleaned up.

Now we have to wait another year for someone like Thomas Westphal, TJ Hansen or Solomon Kwartowicz to go after it. At the rate they’re improving…

Whither Indoor Nationals?

We now have 3 indoor national meets for high schoolers, not counting any additional AAU affairs. And frankly, that’s two too many. Some say more nationals means more opportunities for athletes. I get that, but if you’re going to go down that road, why not even more? How about 50 of them so everyone gets a fair opportunity and no one has to travel far? Heck, maybe we call every meet with more than 100 athletes a national championship, just like we call every race with more than 2 good runners an “elite” event?

Ah, nope. In a perfect world, there’s one national high school champion. And until we get back to that situation, we’re delivering a watered-down experience to fans of high school track. Nike and New Balance and adidas are going to have to battle this one out. This year, with its fast new facility in Boston, New Balance stole the headlines as well as most of the nation’s top athletes. It wasn’t even close. And Michigan athletes, for the most part, opted for Boston. Six state records fell there, as opposed to two in the Armory.

Nationals crucial to the Michigan record book

Look at the official indoor state records lists (boys - http://michtrack.org/records-indoor.html, girls- http://michtrack.org/records-indoor-g.html ). Of the 38 events listed for the girls (a list that includes some no-longer run distances), 17 were set at various prep nationals. For the boys, it’s 42 events total (more than the girls, because of different hurdle heights & throwing implements). Of those, 17 (again) were set at nationals. The all-time lists in many events are dominated by nationals marks.

It's no mystery—the athletes are typically in the best shape of the season, they’re facing the best competition they’ve faced, and everything at nationals is record-legal and professionally officiated.

Indoors is done. Or is it?

You may have noticed that the club-only portion of our season stretching from December to mid-March is routinely called “indoors” and everything once the athletes put their school uniforms on is called “outdoors.” Coaches and athletes still sometimes refer to the few early season indoor invites as “outdoor meets.” Yeah, it’s weird. Statistically – and using common sense – if there’s a roof, it’s an indoor meet. So those marks will go on the Michtrack indoor lists, which have been updated with the massive number of marks from nationals.

2023 girls: http://michtrack.org/2023%20Girls%20Indoor.pdf

2023 boys: http://michtrack.org/2023%20Boys%20Indoor.pdf

Stats: Records Broken in 2023

A Legend You Need To Know:
Hall of Famer Judi Brown (East Lansing HS 1979)

Brown started out at Haworth High in Indiana, hitting 13.7 over the 110-yard lows in summer competition. For her senior year, the 5-11 athlete moved to East Lansing and won acclaim in basketball. Yet she shone more brightly in track, recording bests of 13.9, 55.9.

At her only MHSAA Finals, Brown took 2nd to Kim Turner of Detroit Mumford in the ’79 Class A 110-yard lows. She also took 2nd in the 440 to another future Olympian, Delisa Walton of Detroit Mackenzie. That’s the closest she would come to winning a state title. Yet in a brilliant career over 400 hurdles she would end up winning an NCAA title, 4 U.S. titles and an Olympic medal.

At Michigan State, she made All American in 1982, the first year the NCAA offered a women’s meet. The next year she won the 400H in a meet record 56.44. “I wasn’t even tired,” she said. “Of course, after I stopped I was.” She also won three Big 10 titles in the event.

As a pro the next year, Brown became the first American to break 55 seconds in the 400H with her 54.99 at the U.S. Champs. A few weeks later she won the Trials with another American record, 54.93. “I kept waking up in the early morning hours,” said Brown. “I think if this race were run at 5 a.m., I’d set a World Record. I had run this race 30,000 times in my mind. It’s just good to get it over with in reality.”

She captured silver in the Los Angeles Olympics, clocking a PR 55.20; initially, she took the defeat hard. “When I sat there looking up at my time on the scoreboard, I was just disgusted with myself.”

She responded by getting faster over the next few years. In 1985, she won the Rome GP meet in an American record 54.38. She took her 4th-straight USA title with a meet record 54.45. Her lifetime best of 54.23 came in winning gold at the 1987 Pan-Am Games. She made the finals of the World Championships in Rome that year despite fighting a virus at the time, placing 8th.

In 1988, in her final appearance at the Olympic Trials, she was felled by a heat stroke—yet she still finished 5th. In all, she made the Track & Field News World Rankings 3 times (’84, ’85, ’87)—ranking No. 2 in the world in ’87.

Interview: Kellen Kimes

Kellen Kimes didn’t start throwing seriously until the end of the football season his junior year at Hart High School. By the end of the year, he held the state record in the hammer throw at 195-11, the mark that placed him 3^rd at Nike Nationals (the high school hammer weight is 12lb, same as the shot). Now a senior, the Liberty University signee has taken the indoor weight throw (a 25lb implement) to state record distances, winning the New Balance Nationals with his final throw of 78-4.25. He shares his experience as one of the nation’s top hammer throwers in a state that doesn’t even offer the hammer officially:

Michtrack: What was the indoor nationals experience like?

Kimes: I went to Nike Nationals the day before, and I did exactly what I told myself I wasn’t gonna do. I got caught up in the atmosphere, just the same I did last year and I really struggled to find my groove and I totally forgot about one of the big cues that helped me with fast circles. I did a lot of regrouping after that meet and was talking to my coaches and I really just zoned in, focused in on some of the cues I needed to work on. And the next day [at New Balance] I was like, you know what? Let's just focus on saving throws and slowly building into it, because I knew that an easy throw would get me in the finals.  I'm gonna build into a big throw and I'll plan on my last throw being my biggest throw instead of really trying to hit it from the start. If you look at the series, every single mark just went farther and farther and farther… I got that first safe mark and then I got the next one, then I got the next one and I just kept building into it and the atmosphere of the arena was just getting more and more energy as farther and farther throws were going out there. And so I just let that carry me into a big throw at the very end.

Michtrack: How did you get started throwing the hammer?

Kimes: I'll go from the start because it makes it easier to understand. My family's a big track family, so track has never been foreign to me. All three of my older sisters did collegiate track, my dad and mom did as well. We're a whole track family, but it was never in throwing. My dad was a decathlete, so he threw a little bit, but we really loved pole vault. I worked on hurdles, I worked on pole vault and I was a sprinter and that's what I did all throughout middle school. And I loved it. I enjoyed it. I just felt my comfort there and I was really excited for it.

But going from eighth grade to freshman year, I gained a lot of weight just by lifting weights, a lot of muscle mass. I started getting stress fractures pretty chronically. That was with me trying to vault and sprint and hurdle. So I took out everything except for pole vault. Tried to fight through it. The stress fractures never went away. Sophomore year I just picked up the discus and started throwing. I didn't really like the shot. I ended up being able to go to state in discus in my sophomore year as well as pole vault. But these shin splint things, these stress fractures weren't really going away.

I kind of enjoyed this throwing thing. After football season junior year, I went to the first indoor track meet and I absolutely fell in love with the atmosphere of it. I just loved meeting all the new people, the energy of it, how everyone was cheering each other on. Nobody was at each other's throats. They were all glad to see other throwers throwing far because it pushed them to throw farther as well. I was like, “This is what I want to do.” And so I started working at it. My middle sister, she had a friend who was a hammer thrower at Grand Valley and he was the one that was like, ‘Hey, you should try a hammer.’

I showed up to a random practice with this guy, Hunter Harding. And he showed me the ropes of weight throw and hammer. I instantly fell in love with that. It just became my natural event quickly. I got plugged in with some coaches that were really willing to help me grow and help me to learn how to actually throw it with technique instead of muscling it. I took those opportunities when I could and my parents were really supportive with that, letting me drive all the way to Grand Rapids multiple times a week just to get that coaching.

Michtrack: Arguably, you are much better at weight and hammer than at our official MHSAA events, shot and discus. Is that what drew college recruiters to you?

Kimes: That’s really what I was being recruited for. Coaches told me, ‘Hey, it just looks like you know your way around the circle. And hammer and weight throw really requires a lot of technique, arguably more than the other two throwing events. And they really liked how I used to pole vault; that’s a very technical event as well.

Michtrack: Are you planning any hammer competitions during the school season?

Kimes: I’m going down to Ohio at least two times. I’m hoping if there are any hammer events in Michigan, I’m going to go to those as well. I think Grand Valley’s going to try to hold one. They also hold the Redemption Meet that’s open to anybody right after the state meet. And then obviously I’m going to Nike Nationals. I’m also talking to my dad about trying to get into a college meet and throw the 16lb hammer too. I’m just starting to get back into hammer training after a long weight throw season, but I’ve got some high hopes. I’m really excited.

Behind The Michtrack Newsletter

Well, here goes. I’ve been thinking about doing this for a long time, but since I have a day job that is quite intensive, I was not sure if I could commit to the consistency that a newsletter devoted to Michigan track & field (and XC) would require. To be honest, I’m still not 100% sure, but now that Michtrack is an IRS-approved nonprofit in need of fundraising, I felt it essential to work at a communication channel that is more effective than the standard social media routes.

My initial plan was to call this newsletter “Time Permitting” and just do it when I had free time, but my wife brutally shot that idea down. So the name is what it is, and I’ll try to be consistent and publish this every Tuesday morning, but there will be weeks I have to miss here and there. Last week, for instance, was a doozy. I had spent a week in Mexico chasing birds (that’s something I do when I need a break from track). Got back and had to jump immediately into a backlog of day-job work. For those of you who don’t know, I am managing editor of Track & Field News, which has been covering the sport in this country for 75 years now.

Clearing the backlog meant writing a chunk of our coverage of the NCAA D1 Finals, and interviewing and writing feature articles on a great group of Collegiate Record breakers: multi-eventer Kyle Garland, pole vaulter Sondre Guttormsen, jumper Jasmine Moore (a Motor City TC alum) and sprinter/hurdler Britton Wilson. Head to trackandfieldnews.com if you want to read any of these.

What will the newsletter cover?

Good question, and I welcome your feedback if there’s something you want more of here. For now, here’s the line-up:

• the latest news that affects our sport

• commentary (I do have opinions from time to time)

• stats/records

• interviews

• historical coverage

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