He ran with something to prove.<\/p>\n
And by Friday evening at the Class 4A state track and field meet at Mount Tahoma High, it was clear Steven Warner had made his point: the Kentwood High senior is, in fact, one of the state\u2019s elite hurdlers.<\/p>\n
Now Warner finally has a gold medal to show for it.<\/p>\n
Warner torched the Mount Tahoma High track Friday afternoon, delivering a scorching time of 14.23 \u2013 a personal best \u2013 in the 110 hurdles to bring home the state crown.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am just so excited. I finally got my state championship,\u201d said Warner, who took third at state in the 110 hurdles a year ago.<\/p>\n
But Warner didn\u2019t just win the gold, he blew away the competition. His time of 14.23 wasn\u2019t only a personal best, but also considerably faster than second-place finisher Cory Okazaki of Emerald Ridge, who clocked a 14.51. Warner ran a 14.53 in the preliminary round, which was the second-fastest time.<\/p>\n
The golden performance also provided Warner with a bit of redemption. A week earlier during the district meet, the KW senior was disqualified from the 300 hurdles. On the final stretch of that race, an opponent in a nearby lane came in contact with Warner\u2019s hurdle, causing it to bounce down to the ground and spring back up. A fraction of a second later, the Kentwood senior came crashing to the ground after attempting to clear the moving hurdle. He entered the district meet with the top time in the 300 hurdles.<\/p>\n
On Friday, however, there were no moving hurdles for Warner to traverse.<\/p>\n
And the result was all gold.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo work toward something like this for three years and to finally get it is just awesome,\u201d said Warner. \u201cLast year, I hurt my hamstring and didn\u2019t get to run most of the year until the end. And then, this year, I did it again. But it was early enough to where I was able to get everything back together because my times were dropping a lot each week.\u201d<\/p>\n
Always a class act, Warner credited his coach, Rhamu McCoy, for much of his success.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just shows that we have the best (hurdler) coach in the state,\u201d Warner said.<\/p>\n
McCoy, a 1992 Kentwood High graduate, actually held the school record in the 110 hurdles until Warner broke the mark last week with a 14.40 time.<\/p>\n
After Warner\u2019s win, McCoy beamed like a proud father.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard to put it into words because … if there is anybody that I wanted to break my record, it would be Steven,\u201d said McCoy. \u201cI was hoping he would break both of them (McCoy\u2019s other school record is in the 300).<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was impeded (last week), but the judges won\u2019t call it that.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Warner wasn\u2019t alone among Kentwood standouts during the state meet. Junior Tim Pettit brought home a bronze medal in the 800, stopping the clock in 1:53.29.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a kid who 18 months ago had not done organized sports in his life,\u201d said Kentwood coach Steve Roche. \u201cHe continues to shock and amaze us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though Pettit was pleased, he took the third-place finish in stride.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s still room for improvement,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Kentwood\u2019s top performance among females came from its 4 x 400 relay team of Alena Davis, Kyra Gaines, Megan McNally and Dana Wareham, which took third with a time of 4:00.48.<\/p>\n
Kentwood\u2019s Holly DeHart added a fifth-place finish in the 200 meter (25.19) while Wareham grabbed sixth place in the 400 (59.00).<\/p>\n
\u2022 ALSO:<\/b> Other Kentwood placers included: Jamie Larsen (11th in the pole vault); Alyx Toiana (12th in the shot put) and Kailey Ulland (16th in the 3,200). For the boys, Darrius Coleman added an eighth-place finish in the 110 hurdles; the 4 x 400 relay team (Ricardo Tucker, Kevin Bateman, Warner and Pettit) took seventh and Cody Fishel finished 11th in the high jump. \u2026 Kentwood\u2019s Sammy Brooks took third in the wheelchair discus (15-02.75) and sixth in the 100-meter wheelchair race (34.74). \u2026 Laura Tesch proved to be Kentridge\u2019s top placer, taking fourth in the high jump (5-4). Also placing for the Chargers was Katie Lake (12th in the long jump) and Amelia Carpenter (15th in the pole vault). Luke Carpenter, Kentridge\u2019s lone boy to qualify for state, took 16th in the pole vault.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
He ran with something to prove. And by Friday evening at the Class 4A state track and field meet at Mount Tahoma High, it was clear Steven Warner had made his point: the Kentwood High senior is, in fact, one of the state\u2019s elite hurdlers. Now Warner finally has a gold medal to show for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":9343,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-9342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9342"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9342"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=9342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}