Springs Valley Community High School

Years of steady growth continued on Thursday as the Springs Valley boys’ track and field team competed at the Bedford North Lawrence Sectional. A year after their impressive second-place finish in an unclassified field containing several larger schools, the Blackhawks did even better. They weren’t quite able to make it back to second place, finishing behind Jennings County and Seymour, but that was despite them improving their team score from 92 to 100. The Owls edged them by just three points and Jennings County finished with 116.5 points to win the title. It was the highest point total the Blackhawks had ever recorded at a sectional meet and it was put together without contributions from key competitors, making it a rather positive night for Springs Valley. “I think it’s awesome,” Springs Valley coach Derek Freeman said. “We’re so young and on top of that we had two extremely valuable guys to us in Christian (Hamilton) and Ezra (Mills) who were injured, just knowing that we scored that many points even in those circumstances is pretty impressive.” Springs Valley set the tone for the evening in the sectional’s opening race: the 3200-meter relay. In that race Max Pendley, Carson Brown, Grant Brown, and Alan Marshall combined to blow the rest of the field out of the water, winning by more than seven seconds and lapping half the field in the process. With the victory, they became Springs Valley’s first sectional-championship relay team since 1992. That was just the beginning for Marshall in particular. The junior would go on to win the 1600-meter run by nearly three seconds with a school-record time of 4:23.77, then take the 800-meter championship as well by setting a new school-record time of 1:59.01. It was a gutsy performance that quite literally left Marshall on his knees by the time he finished the 800 and because of it he became just the second Blackhawk ever to win three events at the same sectional meet. “He is different. I don’t know if we’ve ever seen anybody around these parts who is as tough and as determined and as driven as he is,” Freeman said. “I hesitate because I want him to have an opportunity to be successful, but he just wants to do all three events at regional. We went back and forth on what to scratch him out of and he just wanted to try all three. In his mind it’d be great to go to (the) State (Finals), but if not he’ll be back next year. He’s so determined and so tough that that’s not going to stop him from competing. “He puts up times that are the fastest in our school’s history and you look at him go and, well, he can go faster. He’s different. I don’t even know if there’s a word for it.” Springs Valley also got a pair of individual championships from Larron Childers. The junior — the seventh Blackhawk to win multiple titles, the third to win multiple titles at the same sectional, and the first to win multiple field events at the same sectional — swept the throws at Bedford. He took the discus with a throw of 154-7, then capped off the night with a personal-record shot put of 49-2 — the second furthest in school history. It’s crazy for a small school to sweep the throws even with multiple athletes at a sectional — like Springs Valley’s Ella Meehan and Sarah Drabing did at the girls’ sectional two days prior — so for a school of Springs Valley’s size to produce an athlete that can win both on the same night is amazing. “He’s a unicorn. He’s strong as a plow horse, he’s a worker, he’s never satisfied, and weightlifting has helped him to have great body control which helps him with throwing. He doesn’t understand how special he is,” Freeman said. “He’s pushing the limits of some amazing things. He probably threw a throw that would land him in the State Finals tonight, but it landed a foot out of bounds. He has that potential in him. “He’s special. End of story, he’s very special.” Marshall and Childers were far from the only Blackhawks that excelled on Thursday. Five others were able to qualify for the Bloomington North Regional, earning a total of 11 berths at next week’s meet. Pendley and Carson Brown, of course, will advance with the relay team. So will Grant Brown, but he also qualified in the 3200-meter run and the 1600-meter run as he finished second and fifth in those events respectively. Jaheim Hamilton qualified in three different events: the 110-meter hurdles, the 300-meter hurdles, and the long jump, and Isaiah Ervin was the final Blackhawks to make the cut as he got a call back in the 400-meter dash. For all of that success, the Blackhawks did leave the meet a bit disappointed. They walked into the meet hoping, expecting even, to win the program’s first team sectional championship and had a realistic shot at doing just that. Injuries played a part in them failing to meet that potential, of course. Christian Hamilton battled through pain to finish eighth in the 100- and 200-meter dashes, but was unable to make the finals in the long jump. Mills wasn’t able to make the finals in the 100 and scratched out of the 200 due to his injury. Outside of those two, there were plenty of athletes who left feeling that they could’ve performed better. At this point in the team’s growth, though, that isn’t a bad thing. Mills competed for the final time on Thursday and whenever the 3200-meter relay team’s state tournament ends, so will Pendley’s career, but those are the only two Springs Valley athletes who competed at sectional who are graduating. That means that the Blackhawks will be returning 97.5 of their 100 points when they return to sectional next year and, with a little luck next week, they could have a State Finalist or two in tow as well. “Tonight was the first night I’ve seen this group be tight, tense. They wanted it badly, but I think they also just put a lot of pressure on themselves and for this group to see that a night like that produced that many points with two very unhealthy sprinters, it just shows them what they’re capable of. Hopefully it shows them what to be driven and determined for in the future,” Freeman said. “We’ve got a group that’s very special and we can add some young guys to it. We just keep pushing the envelope and we’re going to have some guys who are going to come back next year hungry. “I think that’s what tonight is going to give them: hunger.”