Dunwoody Track Team Wins First County Championship

Dunwoody track coach Brad Hendrickson fought the urge to keep score during the recent DeKalb Championships, despite sensing his boys were on the verge of a breakthrough.

Only once Kyle Sexton clocked a personal best by 22 seconds in the 3,200 meters, the meet's penultimate event, did he begin believing his team might have captured its first county championship.

"We try not to do math, but to focus on our own individual races and not what others were doing," Hendrickson said. "We try not to think about (outcomes), but just run the way we know we can."

Indeed, good things happened at Panthersville Stadium, as Dunwoody became the 13th school to capture a DeKalb title with a 95-71 victory over defending champion Southwest DeKalb, while Dunwoody's girls took sixth.

In addition to Sexton's performance, the Wildcats' win was keyed by Dazel Claytor and James Dwyer, who both won two running events, and Kuaniyal Chol, who won another. Claytor claimed victories in the 100 in 10.92 seconds and the 200 in 22.18, while Dwyer captured the 1,600 in 4:24.30 and 3,200 9:41.74. Chol won gold in the 800 at 1:59.29.

Dwyer, whose races were both personal bests, likes Hendrickson's idea of not keeping score during the meet.

"If coach said, 'Yea, we're down by 20 points,' that could be discouraging," he explained. "He's pretty superstitious. If you ask him who's winning, he'd say 'Go run your race and don't worry about it.'"

Hendrickson said everything simply came together at precisely the right time for the Wildcats to outdistance the meet of 19 boys teams.

"We've got a bunch of hard working kids working together," he said. "I was very surprised because Southwest DeKalb is such a good school with such a great history in track."

Southwest, whose eight DeKalb boys titles ties Druid Hills for the most, was led by Malcolm Brock's victories in the 300 hurdles (40.02), high jump (6 feet, 4 inches) and triple jump (45-04.5). But Dunwoody's performance was superior as it joined Avondale, Miller Grove, Hamilton, Shamrock and Walker as teams to have won once.

Chol, who felt he ran a "smart" 800, agreed the win was a team effort.

"Everybody doing their part gave us the win," he said. "We knew we could do it, but we knew we needed a team effort to pull off a win like we did."

The Dunwoody girls were led among 17 teams by Jessika Banks' win in the 300 hurdles (44.63) and Alex Cameron's runner-up finish in the 3,200 (11:27.97) and fourth-place ending in the 1,600 (5:21.01).

Both Dunwoody teams' focus now is this month's Region 6-AAAA meet, which the Wildcat boys won in 2008 and '09 and were second to St. Pius in last season.

"Our focus and training has always been on region championships," Hendrickson said. "We've still got a lot of work to do. But if we do what we need to do on the track, good things will happen."