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New Bern High School athletes took home two national relay titles in the Nike Indoor Nationals last weekend. Pictured, front, from left, Anthony Hendrix, Fuquawn Greene; back, from left, Rodney Stewart, Miles Sparks and Andrew Hendrix.
Liz Bowles/Sun Journal
National Notoriety
New Bern High School track athletes shine at Nike Indoor Nationals
By Natalie Sayewich
Sun Journal Staff
Never has the phrase, "There's always next year" been so true.
New Bern track athletes - competing for Track Eastern Carolina, a club composed of athletes from around the region - went to the Nike Indoor Nationals in Landover, Md., last weekend with aspirations of doing something never done before: win four relays in the meet.
The goal - national titles in the 4x200-meter, 4x400, 4x800 and sprint medley relays - was a lofty one, but not out of reach.
In the end, they fell just short.
But, if they need to find a silver lining to their two-national champion, two-second place performance-cloud, they need only to look amongst themselves and count how many of their group will be missing next year.
Barring any unforeseen circumstances, the answer is none.
Of the eight New Bern athletes that trekked to Landover for the meet, all eight emerged as newly-decorated Nike first-team All America honorees (a title earned by placing in the top two of an event at the NIN), and none of them are seniors. Six of the eight will be wearing new national champion rings, soon enough; three will be wearing two.
Twin brothers Andrew and Anthony Hendrix, juniors, each ran a leg for both national champion relay squads.
Fuquawn Greene - a sophomore - took an individual national title in the 200-meter dash in 21.98 seconds and joined the Hendrix brothers in the sprint medley along with, Miles Sparks, also a sophomore. The foursome set a new meet record of 3:29.29 (beating the previous mark of 3:29.39 set by Track Eastern the year before) to take the team's third-straight win in the event.
The 4x800 squad of the Hendrix brothers, and juniors Banks Barnes and Rodney Stewart also picked up a win with a time of 7:58.18, defeating Chaminade High School which put up the biggest fight with a second-place time of 7:58.75.
Greene, Daishawn Styron, Mike Price and Anthony Hendrix took second in the 4x200 with a time of 1:30.02, behind Waldorf Track Club, which took the win with a time of 1:28.90.
Because of the scheduling of certain events in proximity to others, Track Eastern re-quested to run in one of the earlier, unseeded heats of the 4x400 which took place earlier in the day, to give themselves more of a chance to recover for other events.
"We were sitting there hoping that just off the earlier heat that we ran, we were going to be able to carry through the 4x4; through the fast heats," Track Eastern coach Dave Simpson said.
Though the team smoked the rest of the second heat by more than five seconds, its time of 3:22.12 didn't hold up, and Bethel High School won with a time of 3:20.79 in the fourth heat.
Still, two relay titles and two second places aren't shabby by any means, and is enough - at least for now.
"It was satisfying to us," Simpson said. "We went in hoping to win four relays, but, be-cause of the circumstances, we didn't get four."
"It's very encouraging," said Nicholas Sparks, best-selling author, father to Miles and former Notre Dame runner who serves as another of the team's coaches. "It's a very young team and it's wonderful to know that most of them are coming back, and, at the same time, we also have a number of other very quality freshmen and sophomores who next year will be contributing. It's a young team that's coming back and will, most likely, be stronger in the future than it is now."
In addition to the relays and Greene's individual win in the 200, Styron also finished 27th overall in the 60-meter dash and Price took 22nd in the long jump with a leap of 21-02.50.
To New Bern, the trip was an improvement on the solo-relay championship performance that the New Bern athletes turned in last year, and still leaves room for upgrading in the 2009 indoor national meet.
"Nick [Sparks] came over and said, ‘Dave, one thing we can say now is we have is a goal to shoot for next year. We don't have to go out next year, because we won all four this time and try to break all four.'"
Natalie Sayewich can be reached at (252) 635-5668 or nsayewich@freedomenc.com.
