Jacobs' Trevor wins, but he's not yet satisfied
The elite athlete is never truly satisfied.
Take Jacobs senior Danny Trevor, for instance.
The 2009 state qualifier tied for the fastest 110-meter hurdles preliminary time at the 43rd annual Carlin Nalley Invitational, then won the finals.
Later, out of 32 athletes who ran the 300 hurdles on the red track at Benedictine University in Lisle, Trevor came out on top, at 40.01 seconds.
Still, he was not satisfied especially when satisfaction means at least a shot at the state finals.
"To do that I need to get seven steps down to the first hurdle, and I couldn't do that today," Trevor said after winning the 110 in 15.34 seconds. "I don't know if it was the wind or just the body being tired, but that's the only way that I'm going to be able to win. And I couldn't do that today."
The "seven steps" business is a matter of technique: "I need to be able to balance between striding out and my speed. Right now that's the thing I need to figure out," he said.
He's not alone in his pursuit of hurdles mastery. Jacobs has three seniors - Trevor, David Grady and Cam Kay - who have been competitive hurdlers since they were in sixth grade at Westfield Community School in Algonquin.
"We kind of just have a bond together. Whenever one of us is down the rest of us are there to pick him back up," Grady said.
Kay nearly needed that pick-me-up, literally, when one of his shoes fell off with 100 meters left in his heat of the 300 hurdles.
So did Grady, who got jostled off balance in the 110s and rammed into the fourth hurdle, falling. He picked himself up to still finish seventh of nine finalists.
"Accidents happen," said Grady, who added a fifth-place triple jump with a distance of 41 feet, 1 inch.
Jacobs' 36 points placed sixth among 25 combined Class 2A and 3A teams represented at the two-level Nalley. Waubonsie Valley won the large-school portion with 119 points; Oregon won the 1A portion a seventh straight year.
Joining Grady and Trevor among Golden Eagles scorers were Joey Cieniewicz and William Hennessy each going sub-2:00 in the 800; the 1,600 relay of Trevor, Fil Skrzenski, Hennessy and Jason Ofodile; and junior Nick Ellingson in the 3,200.
He wouldn't have changed a thing, but Ellingson didn't believe dancing all night Friday with prom date Caitlyn Rich did him any favors in that 3,200, a sixth-place finish in a still-respectable 9:46.67.
"On the last mile I felt more tired than I normally do," Ellingson said, "so I'm thinking that had something to do with it."