Vocational’s Smith too fast for competition

Updated: May 19, 2011 9:42PM

The faster Darius Smith runs, the faster he still wants to go.

The Vocational senior ran the quickest 100 meters in the state two weeks ago at the Public League meet, going 10.70 seconds. On Thursday, he lowered his state best to 10.62 in winning the 100 at the Class 3A St. Ignatius Sectional at Concordia University in River Forest.

Satisfied? Not by a long shot.

“There’s always room for improvement,” said Smith, who also won the 200 in 21.56, the second fastest time in the state this year. “My goal (at state) is to get low 21s (in the 200), low 10s (in the 100).”

Also looking to pick up the pace at next weekend’s Class 3A state meet at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston is Oak Park-River Forest’s Malachy Schrobilgen. He was ranked fourth and teammate Jack Stapleton was third in Class 3A in the 1,600, but both bypassed that event on Thursday to concentrate on the 3,200. The strategy paid off as they qualified 1-2, with Schrobilgen running 9:09.30 and Stapleton finishing in 9:21.60. Both were season bests by about six seconds.

“We know the field for the 2-mile, we could do more damage in,” Schrobilgen said. “We’ve been doing a lot of speed work, shying away from the 2-mile to train for the 2-mile, so we can be faster.

“The mile field this year is just so stacked. You could be anywhere from 1 to 10 at state. The 2-mile we have more confidence in, and I think it’ll be a good race.”

The 1-2 finish in the 3,200 and a solid effort in the relays powered Oak Park to the team title, 131-80 over Mount Carmel. The Huskies won three relays – the 400 (42.49), 1,600 (3:22.65) and 3,200 (8:05.50) – and were a close second to Dunbar (1:27.94) in the 800 relay, running 1:28.16.

Carl Heinz won the high jump for the Huskies at 6-9 and was second in the triple jump (44-7).

“I’m really happy we won the team title, but I’m even more happy we gave up some individual events to stack our relays to pull as many points at the state meet as possible, and it worked out,” Oak Park coach Tim Hasso said. “We bought ourselves another week to try to get a trophy on Saturday (at state).”

Mount Carmel’s Josh Wilson swept the throws, going 150 feet, 3 inches in the discus and a season-best 56-4.5 in the shot put.

“That’s a goal I’ve been working for,” Wilson said of the sectional titles. “Next week for state, I’m looking forward to at least breaking 58 (feet in the shot) and I’m going to go for 170 (in the discus).”

Young’s Dakarai Howard won the 400 by a wide margin, running a season-best 49.74 seconds. “I didn’t think it’d be that easy at all,” Howard said. “I just followed my coach’s strategy and picked it up around the second curve.”

St. Laurence’s Mike Judd took advantage of one of the best days of a bad-weather spring to win the 110 hurdles in 14.68, just .04 off his season best.

“There’s been a lot of meets getting messed up with (bad) weather, a lot of cold meets (when) I couldn’t run my best time,” Judd said. “I feel I can definitely cut some (more time) off.”

Other individual champs were Fenwick’s Steve Blazer in the 800 (1:55.47), Fenwick’s Ian Barnett in the 1,600 (4:17.43), St. Ignatius’ Conor Dunham in the 300 hurdles (40.36), St. Laurence’s Matt Dwyer in the pole vault (12-0), Hyde Park’s Jamal Stubbs in the long jump (21-9.5) and St. Rita’s Cody Leach (45-0).

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