2005 Nike Outdoor Nationals - Preview Two Triangle-area Hurdlers Prepare for Nike Outdoor National Championships Monday - June 13, 2005 Contributed to NCPrepTrack.com by Steve McGill With the Nike Outdoor National Championships taking place at North Carolina A & T University in Greensboro this coming weekend (on Friday June 17th and Saturday June 18th), two of the best hurdlers in our state are preparing to compete against some of the best athletes the nation has to offer. Johnny Dutch of Clayton High School in Clayton, NC, and Gabby Mayo of Southeast High School in Raleigh, NC, both are looking forward to this opportunity to prove their mettle on a large stage. Dutch, who just finished his tenth-grade year, won the 3A state championship in both the 110m hurdles and the 300m hurdles, in times of 13.88 and 38.01, respectively. His personal best in the 110’s – 13.77 – has merited him a ranking of fifth best in the nation according to www.dyestat.com. At the Nike meet, Dutch will compete in both the 110m high hurdles and the 400m intermediate hurdles. In the 110’s, he will be looking to come back from a disappointing performance at the Nike Indoor Nationals this past March. Although he broke the national sophomore record in the 60m hurdles at the meet, he only finished fifth, due mainly to a slow start. He made up a lot of the ground on the rest of the field, but smacked the fifth hurdle very hard and didn’t have time to recover. “If it had been an outdoor race,” he said, “hitting the hurdle wouldn’t have been a big deal. But because it was the last hurdle, I didn’t have time to make it up. But that was my first national high school meet, and I know I’ll have outdoor nationals, so that race motivated me to work a lot harder.” Dutch’s performance at the Indoor Nationals, as well as his indoor state title in the 55m hurdles, earned him the title of Male Indoor Track and Field Athlete of the Year by the Raleigh News and Observer. In regards to that honor, Dutch said that he “worked hard for it,” but was surprised to have won it because “a lot of guys had really good seasons.” At the Nike outdoor meet, Dutch hopes to improve upon his personal best of 13.77 in the 110’s, and he knows that he’ll probably see many of the same faces he saw at the Nike indoor meet. “I try not to worry too much about my opponents,” he said. “As long as I beat my personal best, it doesn’t matter what place I get.” Still, he does acknowledge that if he does run a personal best, that should put him in a position where he can compete for first place. In the 400m hurdles – an event in which he has competed only once – Dutch hopes to break his personal best of 55.14, which he ran in early June at the USATF sectional meet. The longer hurdle race is not his specialty, but he has been doing a lot of repeat 200s in the past couple weeks to build up his late-race strength. His plan in that race is to “run with the other guys” and try to crack the top six. He knows that his inexperience in that event will put him at a disadvantage, but he is hoping for the best. As for Mayo, who also is a sophomore, she had a stand-out year on the track for Southeast Raleigh, winning the 4A state championship in the 100m hurdles (14.41) and 300m hurdles (44.62), and she also competed on the 4x200 and 4x400 relay teams that both finished second. Mayo, who was voted MVP of the 4A state meet, was also voted Female Outdoor Track and Field Athlete of the Year by the Raleigh News and Observer. “I’m proud of myself,” the humble Mayo reluctantly acknowledged, “but winning that award also gave me motivation to do better, because I know I can.” At the Nike meet, which will mark her first time competing in a high school national championship meet, Mayo will be running the 100m hurdles, the 100 meter dash, and the second leg of Southeast’s 4x200m relay team. She wasn’t originally going to enter in the 100, but decided to do so after running a stunning 11.78 against virtually no competition at the USATF sectional meet in the first weekend of June. Having never run the open 100 before, she was pleasantly surprised by her fast time, and now feels confident that she can compete with the best in the nation in the event. In the same meet, she also ran a 24.29 in the 200 meter dash, and although she won’t be running the 200 in the Nike meet, she plans to continue racing in that event in the Junior Olympic meets throughout the rest of the summer. Competing in three events is a rather large task at a national championship meet, but Mayo feels she can handle it. “I’ll stay in the shade, stay in the cool air, and make sure I warm up good,” she said. “I should be fine.” Her goal for the meet is to finish among the top three in all the events in which she participates, which would be quite an accomplishment if she is able to pull it off, especially for a sophomore. Although the hurdles are her specialty, she knows that the best in the nation in that event are running under 14.00, which she has yet to do. “I have to work on staying on the balls of my feet and snapping down my lead leg,” she noted. In the 100, where such technical issues aren’t as emphatic, she expects that the high level of competition will help her to improve significantly upon her personal best. It will be exciting to see how Dutch and Mayo fare amongst the country’s elite Track & Field athletes. For those of you planning to attend the meet, be sure to cheer on these two fine hurdlers as they do their best to represent the state of North Carolina in the biggest high school track meet held in the United States.

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