Track teams ready for indoor state

Updated: March 28, 2011 9:38AM

Traditions build slowly, without prodding from marketing wizards or promotional geniuses.

The Illinois Prep Top Times Indoor Classic is such an example. Conceived as a de facto indoor state championship in 1990, considered less than that for a number of years, it now holds that status among the runners, jumpers and throwers in the state.

"To me it's just another indoor meet," Beecher coach Henry Nykaza said. "But to our kids it's something they shoot for, because you have to have a certain time. It's a great practice motivator."

The Prep Top Times meet, in recent years run at Illinois Wesleyan's Shirk Center in Bloomington by Young girls coach Rob Geiger - a Bloom stalwart in his prep days - now attracts most of the best track and field performers in the state, and has become a predictor of who'll be battling it out at the IHSA's championships in May.

Take last year's Class 3A girls 55-meter dash. The top five at Prep Top Times: Aaliyah Brown (Lincoln-Way East), Cessily Jones (Plainfield North), Jeronda Womack (Homewood-Flossmoor), Kellion Gordon (Niles West) and Morolake Akinosun (Waubonsie Valley). The top five in the IHSA 100-meter final two months later: Brown, Womack, Gordon, Jones and Akinosun, the latter two in a dead heat for fourth.

Not every race always matches up so closely. Raena Rhone of Young won last year's 3A girls 400 at both Top Times and the IHSA finals, but every other competitor in the two finals was different. Still, competing well in Bloomington often leads to competing well in Charleston.

"It's a carrot for the kids," Evergreen Park boys coach Ray Mankowski said. "It's been a great thing. It's kind of a prestigious meet, because you have to qualify for it. You don't just enter."

That's what sets Prep Top Times apart from the other big indoor gatherings, including last weekend's extravaganza at the Illinois Armory in Champaign. There, teams are entered en masse.

Evergreen Park's Chris Cheatham qualified for the 55-meter hurdles thanks to a best time of 8.16 seconds early in the indoor season, and will chase a Class 2A title Saturday.

"He's gotten stronger every year," Mankowski said. "His only problem is shin issues, so we've been running him on grass in practice."

Classes 2A and 3A compete Saturday. The meet starts with Class 1A on Friday night, when Nykaza hopes his 3,200 relay team - with three of last year's four state champions - comes through. Jacob Kensing, a 400 specialist, joins Griffin Nykaza, Grant Nykaza and Jordan Jouquin in the lineup. Griffin, the Southland pace-setter in the 1,600, also will run at that distance.

There are 86 entries from the Southland in all, including boys Class 2A 200 record-holder Lexus Jackson, of Crete-Monee, Lincoln-Way East sprinters Brown, Meagan Marias and Nicole Nepote, Hillcrest's boys 800 relay team, high jumper Aaron Baker of T.F. North and the area's two best female pole vaulters, Brittany Holst, of Marist, and Kaitlyn Neiheisel, of Lincoln-Way West.

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