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Lake County female athlete of the year: Brittny Ellis, Warren

As she raced around the track, enjoying every stride and all 400 meters, she was simply happy.

What a run.

"I was just out there for a jog," Brittny Ellis. "I was smiling the whole time."

Her time was jaw-dropping.

One minute, 40 seconds.

For 400 meters.

"I was really bad," Ellis said with a laugh, recalling what might have been her first time ever running the 400, during a Waukegan Park District meet, at about the age of 7. "Actually, my parents convinced me to take a year off from track to focus on tennis because they thought I'd be better at that."

What a racket. Mary and her husband, Morris, both ran track at Eastern Michigan University. Morris made it to the NCAA championships as a decathlete.

"Granted, she was 7-8 years old," Mary Ellis said of her daughter, who just graduated from Warren. "When she won her heat, which was the slow heat, she thought she was the champion. Then it dawned on her that, 'I might have won my heat, but it was not the good heat.' So a goal was, 'I want to be in the good heat.' She kept working for that and got to be where she is now."

Brittny Ellis got better at track. Lots better.

In her final high school meet last month, the 5-foot-10 Ellis sped to victories in the Class 3A 100-, 400- and 200-meter dashes at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston. Because of the rare and spectacular triple the Warren senior pulled off, she is the Daily Herald's Lake County female athlete of the year. She happens to be stellar in the classroom, too, scoring a 33 on her ACT.

What a run.

Ellis accounted for 30 of Warren's 35 points at state, as the Blue Devils tied Barrington for second place behind state champ Lincoln-Way East (51 points). Fellow senior Keely Knobbe, who finished fifth in the discus, accounted for Warren's other five points, as the Blue Devils came home with their first state trophy.

"In (eighth grade), Keely and I did the same thing," Ellis said, "except our school (Viking Middle) wound up getting third at the middle school state meet."

When Ellis arrived at Warren's campus in Gurnee in the fall of 2011, the Blue Devils immediately had themselves one of the state's top sprinters.

"What stood out to me was how smooth she looked on the track," Warren girls track coach Ryan Dunn said. "There's no question she's worked hard to develop that technique, and her focus allowed her to get the results that she did. She's just amazing to watch run."

Ellis won the 400 dash at state as a freshman and sophomore, before settling for third last year. When she signed a letter of intent with the University of Miami last November, she said she had not been "ready to peak" at state her junior year. She was not going to allow a repeat this year. She even went back out for basketball, after skipping her junior year, to help her conditioning.

She dominated all spring and when the state series rolled around, the runner was more than ready for one final run.

"We knew that getting to the finals in those three events (100, 400 and 200) shouldn't be the greatest challenge," Dunn said. "The greatest challenge was going to be executing on Saturday."

First up was the 100. Ellis clocked a personal-best 11.85.

One down, two to go.

"I was glad it was first because I knew that would be my hardest race," Ellis said. "That race can be so everywhere. If you mess up the start, that's it."

Then came her favorite, the 400, which she won by more than a second, clocking a 54.19 - about 45 seconds faster than her time as a 7-year-old.

When she sped across the finish line in 24.38 in the 200, she had her third state championship of the day.

She had accomplished her goal. Which is how it all started, actually.

"She made little goals for herself," Mary said, recalling Brittny's park district track days.

"I would get myself into the fast heat," Brittny recalled. "Then it would go into winning the fast heat, or beating certain people that always beat me."

Ellis just returned from a meet in New Mexico and leaves this week for another in Seattle. In August, she's off to Florida, where she'll enjoy some sunshine before starting her freshman year at Miami.

"We're making a vacation out of it," said Ellis, who has a brother, Branden, an incoming sophomore at Warren. "I'm going to go to SeaWorld. I have family in Fort Lauderdale so they'll probably be coming too."

Expect the speedster to take it slow. She's earned it.

  Warren's Brittny Ellis wins her prelim heat of the 100-meter dash in the Class 3A state semifinals at O'Brien Stadium in Charleston. Laura Stoecker/lstoecker@dailyherald.com
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