Harvey Tracks Down Hurdles Title At Sectional

After suffering two broken legs during a practice mishap last weekend, Don Michelin might be tempted to re-think the training methods he’s using for the Evanston boys track team.

But the veteran coach can point with pride to what that training has done for Jordan Harvey.

Harvey scored the biggest victory of his career, winning the 300-meter hurdles, and Evanston also captured the 1600 relay Thursday at the Class 3A Deerfield Sectional meet. ETHS claimed seven individual qualifying spots overall and also advanced three relays --- their best showing since 2018 --- to next week’s Illinois High School Association state finals at Eastern Illinois University.

The top two finishers in each event at the sectional automatically advanced, along with those who bettered or equaled existing state qualifying standards. Evanston finished second in the team standings with 88.5 points to 124 for meet champion New Trier in the 16-team field.

Evanston’s individual qualifiers included sophomore Justin Johnson in both the 100 and 200-meter dashes, plus Dallas Amos and Deshawn Priester in the 400, Ryan Rice in the 110 hurdles, Enijel Shelton in the shot put, and Harvey.

All three sprint relay teams raced to season best times in the 4 x 100, 4 x 200 and 4 x 400 to keep their seasons alive, too.

Michelin’s strategy for nursing runners and jumpers through injuries has featured regular work in the ETHS pool --- instead of running --- over the past decade and it’s definitely helped Harvey. The junior standout suffered a hip injury early in the indoor season and couldn’t physically handle daily on-the-track workouts.

So instead, Michelin had him jump in the pool. Harvey’s not ready yet to join the swim team, but he recognized that he might have missed the entire season except for the fact that his work load was lighter.

Thursday, he ruled the hurdles race in 39.30 seconds to a 39.72 for runnerup Ikechi Ibe of Hersey.

“It feels great to win a sectional championship, and I’m really feeling good (physically) right now,” said Harvey. “All that work in the pool was a good idea. I thought it was originally --- it meant my body wouldn’t degrade --- and it really helped me keep going.

“Once I hurt my hip, coach decided I needed a new program and he decided to limit me to one event. Last year I got a conference championship and got beat by a senior from Loyola at the sectional. Now I’ve got a sectional championship, too. I think my biggest strength is just getting over the hurdles consistently, because you need to master all eight hurdles. The biggest struggle for a lot of guys is that they slow down after the first two hurdles and don’t have the energy to sustain for the rest of the race.

“Next weekend? My goal is just to get to Saturday (advance out of the State preliminaries). Every year I just want to go farther.”

Evanston’s other win, in the final race of the day, came because of another dazzling performance by Amos on the anchor leg of the 1600 relay. Just minutes after losing in the open 400 to Loyola Academy’s Miles Lyons, Amos surged past him in the final 20 meters of the relay and also beat Prospect’s anchor to the finish line for an eventual winning time of 3:21.73.

Relay runners at the Class 3A state finals trying to beat the Wildkit senior next weekend might be better off letting him run with the lead for awhile once he gets the baton. Amos’ patented come-from-behind heroics have become a staple for ETHS.

“Amos is really a closer, isn’t he?” asked assistant coach Kevin Caines, who guided the team in Michelin’s absence Thursday. “He ran that 48 (48.20, a personal best as the second place finisher in that race) and I think him getting into the 47s is a realistic goal at State. He just has to get out a little stronger --- and keep finishing like he does!”

Johnson’s success at Deerfield came after his involvement in Michelin’s accident last Saturday. The ETHS sophomore sprinter was pulling a training sled (building resistance with his legs) when Michelin was caught in the contraption’s straps and was run over.

Johnson ran over the competition Thursday. In a major test for the still developing sophomore physically, he competed in four races for the first time. He placed second in the 100 (10.81) and 200 (21.63) and also fueled the second place 400 relay (42.39) and third place 800 relay (1:28.06) efforts.

And he wasn’t even breathing heavy after all of that.

“It’s a surreal feeling, the best feeling ever, to be able to do this in four events,” Johnson said. “I’m just so happy right now, so full of adrenaline! This definitely surprises me. I didn’t want to kill myself in the 800 relay --- I won’t say I eased up --- because the (open) 200 was so close after that. I got a terrible start, but I kept pushing and got through.

“All this tells me is now I know what I can do. Saying it and thinking about it is one thing, and it’s way different than (actually) doing it.”

“What I saw from Justin today was just how he closed all four of those races,” Caines praised. “He finished off every single race he had, and that’s been the weaker part of his races. He ran a lot of quality sprints in one day. We wouldn’t have qualified in either of those relays without him.”

Amos and Priester (50.23) scored a 2-4 finish in the open 400, and in the shot Shelton beat out everyone except champion Logan Farrell of Hersey (18.14 meters) with his best toss of 17.06. Rice, a senior, was clocked in a personal best hurdles time of 14.91 seconds on his way to a third place finish.

“The bottom line is that they came ready to do this today, and they got it done. Everything just fell into place for us on the track,” Caines added.