Posted Saturday, May 27, 2006, The OG, sports

A fraction of a second — that's all that separated Uni's 3,200-meter relay team from winning a medal at today's IHSA Class A state championship race in Charleston.

Seniors Cameron Cropek and Kangway Chuang, freshman Malcolm Taylor, and sophomore Austin Rundus ran a team-record time of 8 minutes, 11.88 seconds to finish 10th out of 12 finalists.

The top nine teams won medals. Ninth-place Newton finished less than one-tenth of a second ahead of Uni, turning in a time of 8:11.79.

Indeed, barely six-tenths of a second separated the Illineks from seventh place. Tremont clocked in at 8:11.24 to finish eighth, and Oregon placed seventh with a time of 8:11.21.

Monticello ran 7:53.69 to win the title and break a state record that had stood since 1981.

Uni's performance was more than two seconds faster than Friday's prelim mark of 8:14.30, which in turn was faster than the team's sectional championship time of 8:15.74. In each case, the Illineks set a record for themselves. The team almost broke the school record as well (8:11.75).

Precise times for each Uni runner weren't available when this story was posted, but Cropek's split was roughly a high 2:02, Chuang's a high 2:04, Taylor's a low 2:01, and Rundus' a low 2:02.

Taylor put Uni in a position to win a medal with a tremendous performance during the third leg, shooting forward to eighth place in his final lap.

Rundus, the team's anchor, maintained approximately that position for most of his two laps. It was only at the very end that Jerad Koch of Tremont and Clay Britton of Newton overtook him for the last two medal slots.

“We came out here and we had a couple of goals, mainly the school-record time and medaling in the top nine,” said Chuang. “I am a little disappointed by just missing those goals, but I think this was a
really good experience for Malcolm and Austin, and I'm really glad Cameron and I were able to participate in such a prestigious event. Overall it was a really positive experience, and I'm sure Austin and Malcolm will go in the future.”

The race, held before a near-capacity crowd at O'Brien Stadium on the Eastern Illinois University campus, concluded a tremendous season for Uni's 4x800 runners, whose performances improved throughout the spring.

Taylor in particular put himself on the map as one of the top young runners in Class A.

“There was no freshman open 800 runner with a time faster than Malcolm's split at yesterday's prelims, to get a sense of where he is at,” said teammate Sam Smyth, a senior. “There may have been one other fast freshman on a single A 4x8, but Malcolm is certainly in the top five fastest if not the fastest single A freshman.”

Here are the final results of this afternoon's relay, as reported by the IHSA:

1. Monticello, 7:53.69 (record), Andrew Colbert (sr), Keith Butler (sr), Brent Rhodes (so), Scott Phelps (sr)

2. Rochester, 8:04.68, Tyler Walker (so), Jon Damery (sr), Jacob Cullen (fr), Jordan Cullen (jr)

3. Sparta, 8:06.90, Greg McBride (sr), Patrick Adams (sr), Lee Peck (jr), Jeff Baird (sr)

4. Stanford (Olympia), 8:09.24, Jesse Springer (jr), Jason Springer (sr), Shane Harrison (jr), John Neisler (sr)

5. Herscher, 8:09.62, Bryan Howard (sr), Jonah Vaughn (sr), Kyle Gray (sr), Matt Sommer (sr)

6. Princeton, 8:10.05, Jared Jaggers (sr), Hunter Mickow (so), Patrick Gonigam (sr), Sam McCauley (sr)

7. Oregon, 8:11.21, Tony Portugal (sr), Scott Hallock (sr), Eric Axelson (sr), Eli Hoffman (sr)

8. Tremont, 8:11.24, Carl Pflederer (sr), Jeremy Pflederer (so), Parker Thompson (fr), Jerad Koch (sr)

9. Newton, 8:11.79, Adam Schafer (jr), Doug Brooks (jr), Blake Wolf (sr), Clay Britton (jr)

10. UNI HIGH, 8:11.88, Cameron Cropek (sr), Kangway Chuang (sr), Malcolm Taylor (fr), Austin Rundus (so)

11. Chester, 8:14.47, Chris Kern (so), Matt Rucker (sr), Ben Korscog (sr), Tyler Search (sr)

12. Byron, 8:20.98, Alaa Atieh (sr), Jeff Coltman (fr), Nick Smith (jr), Cole Dixson (sr)

— Gargoyle staff