Whitmore narrowly misses spot in 3A 100-meter final
Lynx junior 9th; shuttle hurdle 11th
Not one of the favorites to contend for a spot in the Class 3A 100-meter dash final, Webster City junior Garrett Whitmore put together the sprint of his life out of Lane 2 on the blue oval inside Drake Stadium yesterday afternoon.
As the sun scorched the surface, Whitmore roasted his previous best time and leaned across the finish line in 11.32 seconds.
The good: It was his best 100 ever. The bad: He missed the final by one-one hundredth of a second, or 10 milliseconds — a fraction of how long it takes someone to blink.
In other words, he couldn’t have been much closer to a medal.
“I was a little disappointed and a little shocked, to be honest,” Whitmore said of his ninth-place performance in the prelims during the opening day of the state meet. “For two people (in Whitmore’s heat) at 11.31 and then me at 11.32, that’s just crazy.”
Whitmore was actually fifth in his heat, by far the deepest of the three.
“I tend to run better against good competition, so it definitely helped me (being in the fast heat),” Whitmore said. “I’m not too disappointed. I’ve got three more events today.”
Whitmore is expected to be a medal contender in the 400 low hurdles at 11:20 a.m. today, and he’s also the lead-off runner on the Lynx 4×100 and 4×200 relays.
“I didn’t think running an 11.32 was possible, so it gives me a little more of a positive outlook for (today),” Whitmore said.
Lincoln LaSourd, who anchors both sprint relays, placed 12th in the 100 prelims. Running one heat in front of Whitmore, LaSourd finished in 11.41.
LaSourd ran into a slight wind, while Whitmore actually had a wind at his back just a few minutes later.
“Both of the guys ran really well,” WCHS head coach Chad Hisler said. “Lincoln had the fastest kid in the state next to him (top finals qualifier Jorma Schwedler of Sergeant Bluff-Luton), so he ran a great race.”
LaSourd competed in the 200 earlier in the morning session and finished 16th overall in 23.21. He entered state seeded 17th.
Webster City’s shuttle hurdle relay closed out the day’s events by placing 11th in the prelims. The quartet of Kaiyu Levongkhom, Kasey Porter, Malachi Montes and Trey Mathis clocked a 1:03.01, which was second in its heat behind class leader Pella (59.78).
A 1:01.93 was the cutoff to qualify for the finals.
“The shuttle hurdle had a great race, a season’s best,” Hisler said. “The last three races of the year — the NCC (meet), districts and state — they got better each time.”