Menu
Blundell closes out career in 13th
Clover grad happy to run sub-2:00 time
BLOOMINGTON -- Nick Blundell ran like there was no tomorrow to his track career, because there wasn't one.
The recent Cloverdale graduate entered Saturday night's Indiana High School Athletic Association's boys' state finals seeded dead last in the 800-meter run among the 27 participants, although just .07 of a second behind No. 26.
Blundell's pre-race goals were to break two minutes for the first time and "not finish last," and he easily accomplished both of those objectives. He ran fourth in the first heat, and his 13th-place overall finish actually put him in the top half of the field.
"I'm really, really proud of myself," Blundell said. "Usually on the first lap, I'm dying and just struggling to pull it together on the second lap, but this time I felt energized the whole time."
Blundell said the excitement of the whole state finals environment and the knowledge it was his last race helped inspire him.
"That definitely got my adrenalin going," he said. "The temperature kind of cooled off when the 800 started, which was good. It was great weather to run in."
Coach Andy Tyler was very proud of Blundell for setting his personal record time.
"It was a bigtime P.R. for him," Tyler said. "The fastest he had gone in a 4x800 relay split was a 1:58:8, but obviously you have a rolling start there so there's a little bit of an advantage.
"He came out and ran a 1:58.2, and that's really exciting for him," Tyler added. "He just came out to run and have fun, with no pressure, and ran extremely well in the traffic."
Blundell's first lap was 56.896 seconds, while his second lap was timed in 1:01.307.
"He got out well early, and first lap was a lot faster," Tyler said. "That's what we were wanting to see out of him. He hung in there, kept his form nice and tight, and gutted it out in his last 100 meters."
Tyler noted that Blundell's 13th-place finish in the state meet was the best in school history in the 800.
The last Clover runner to compete in the event at the state finals was Joe Rumley in 2012. Rumley entered the state meet seeded fifth with a time of 1:55.35, but "had a bad day" according to Tyler and finished 18th in 1:56.71.
Sophomore Tyler Kaeff of Cloverdale said he knew the opposition was going to be good in both the 110-meter high hurdles and the 300-meter low hurdles, but he feels he didn't give himself much of a chance to succeed.
"I think I psyched myself out," said Kaeff, the Bloomington North regional champion in the 300. "I wasn't really nervous, but I think it was the fact that I was at state affected me a little bit. I ran probably the second-worst time in both hurdles that I did all year."
Kaeff's high school career is only half finished, and he can use his low finishes (25th in the low hurdles in 41.51, and 27th in the high hurdles in 15.76) to formulate a better plan of attack for the future.
"Next year I have to be more confident," he said. "I am not going to look at the times, and I don't want anybody to tell me what they are. It just psychs me out."
The high hurdles winner was junior Makiyah Smallwood of Michigan City in 14.49, while senior Dushawn Tunstall of Lawrence North won the low hurdles in 37.59.
Greencastle junior J.T. Matthews finished in a four-way tie for 17th in the high jump with a leap of six feet, two inches.
Normally an outdoor event, the high jump was moved indoors due to heavy rainfall in Bloomington.
Six of the 16 jumpers who finished ahead of Matthews are seniors, including the overall winner -- Daniel Armstrong, also of Michigan City.
Armstrong jumped seven feet to win the state title by one inch, falling just 1.25 inches short of the state record held by three different athletes.