Idaho 2-sport athlete Brody Burch wins multiple state titles on same day

Brody Burch, two-sport athlete at Pocatello (Idaho) wins multiple state championships on the same day.

Brody Burch plays pitcher and runs track and field for Pocatello High School, a small school in Idaho with a little over 1,200 students. This past weekend Burch put all other amateur athletes to shame, accomplishing a remarkable feat by winning two separate state championships on the same day, according to an account by Grayson Weir at Outkick.

On Saturday afternoon, Burch got started by winning the 5A/4A state track meet 800-meter dash in Meridian. While that was happening, Pocatello’s baseball team was 137 miles away in Twin Falls for the 4A State Championship.

After the race ended, Burch’s family drove him to the Boise airport and took a private jet to Twin Falls. Burch arrived in time for the fourth inning and was brought in as a reliever. He struck out four batters in three innings, closing out the win and the state championship for Pocatello baseball.

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Freshman track star Quincy Wilson nearly breaks meet record of sub-45 seconds in 4×400

Quincy Wilson, still 15 years old, nearly broke the 45-second mark in his split of the 4×400 at The Penn Relays in April.

Quincy Wilson rose to prominence on the running scene as a 12-year-old due to his Adidas Track Indoor Nationals performance. Now a freshman, Wilson has only gotten better with age — and it’s still a remarkably young age for the feats he has been producing.

At the Penn Relays on April 27, Wilson ran his split of the 4×400 preliminaries at 45.06, anchoring the Bullis School (Potomac, Md.) boys team to the fastest time of the day at 3:14.12 and helping them advance to the finals. MileSplit estimated that Wilson made up 10-15 meters in his run as the anchor.

Wilson, still just 15 years old, put up one of the fast times in meet history, according to MileSplit. The meet record for a split is 44.8 seconds.

Wilson has had a stellar year, setting freshman records in multiple events. His indoor 400-meter time of 47.30 in February set a national freshman record — and it only lasted a month because he broke it again with a time of 46.67 in his New Balance indoor nationals victory in March. The previous record was 47.97, according to RunnerSpace.

RunnerSpace also wrote that Wilson set indoor class records in the 300m (34.11), 500m (1:02.63) and 600m (1:17.80).

Blossoming into an elite high school runner regardless of age, Wilson still has three more years to make his mark at this level.

Four Arizona state track and field records broken in 1 hour

At the Arcadia Invitational, track and field runners Saira Prince, Tyler Mathews and Jayden Davis broke Arizona state high school records.

Over the course of an hour, the Arizona high school track and field record book was rewritten again and again and again and again.

Four state records were broken by runners at the Arcadia Invitational in Southern California on April 8, according to the Arizona Republic.

First Williams Field High School (Gilbert, Ariz.) runner Saira Prince won the 100-meter hurdles in 13.58 seconds. She cleared al 10 hurdles and broke the previous mark of 13.59, which was set in 2014.

Defending Div. I state champion Tyler Mathews of Red Mountain High School (Mesa, Ariz.) was the next Valley resident to break an Arizona record. He ran the 800-meter in 1:49.32, eclipsing the former record of 1:50.12. Mathews finished second in the race, falling to someone else with an Arizona connection: Newbury Park star Aaron Sahlman, who is committed to Northern Arizona University.

Mountain Pointe High School (Phoenix) senior Jayden Davis then broke the 400-meter record with a time of 46.45 seconds, besting the previous one by .02 seconds. He finished third in the race.

Davis told the Republic that he felt inspired after watching Prince and Mathews break records.

“Seeing all those Arizona athletes being able to do that, I definitely felt that time, that race at Arcadia was that moment to set the state record,” he said. “Going into it, I was like, ‘This is the time to do it.'”

Prince wasn’t done for the night. She finished the wild hour of Arizona racing in the 300-meter hurdles, winning with a time of 41.24 seconds that broke the previous state record of 41.38.

With that, Arizona runners left their mark on the prestigious California high school race over the course of 60 remarkable minutes.

Visit the Arizona Republic to read more about Saira Prince.

Read the profile on Jayden Davis here.

Alabama high school football player killed in shooting at sister’s birthday party

A Dadeville high school athlete was killed in the Alabama shooting at a birthday party over the weekend, according to authorities.

A football player at Dadeville High School was among four people killed in a shooting at a birthday party in Alabama, according to the Montgomery Advertiser.

Philstavious Dowdell, a senior at Dadeville who went by Phil, was a football player, track and field runner, and basketball player who had committed to Jacksonville State for football. Weeks away from graduating, he was among the shooting victims at a sweet 16 birthday party at a dance studio, according to the news outlet.

Four people were killed and 28 were injured, according to the Advertiser. Alabama Law Enforcement Agency Sgt. Jeremy Burkett did not identify the suspect to the news outlet but said the suspect is “no longer a threat to the community.”

Al.com reported that as many as 250 people were outside the hospital that held victims, waiting to hear updates.

The office of President Joe Biden released a statement about the shooting, reading in part:

“This morning, our nation is once again grieving for at least four Americans tragically killed at a teen’s birthday party in Dadeville, Alabama as well as two others killed last night in a crowded public park in Louisville. Jill and I are praying for their families and for the many others injured and fighting for their lives in the wake of this weekend’s gun violence.”

Read the full statement at the Montgomery Advertiser.

Dowdell’s grandmother, Annette Allen, spoke about her grandson with the Montgomery Advertiser.

“He was a very, very humble child. Never messed with anybody. Always had a smile on his face,” she said.

Dowdell played wide receiver and return man on special teams, helping the Tigers go 10-1 in his senior season. He played guard for the basketball team and competed in 100-meter and 200-meter races, winning several events at both distance over his high school career.

Dadeville High School will offer counseling on Monday, the Advertiser reported.

The school will offer counseling Monday for all students. Porter also asked that area clergy reach out to the families who have lost loved ones.

Meet the nominees for All-USA Today HSSA Boys Track & Field Athlete of the Year

These 24 standouts will be honored as nominees for national Boys Track & Field Athlete of the Year.

The USA TODAY High School Sports Awards is pleased to announce the 2022 All-USA TODAY HSSA Boys Track & Field Team!

These 24 standouts will be honored as nominees for national Boys Track & Field Athlete of the Year. The winner and three finalists will be revealed on July 31 during an on-demand broadcast. This year will feature top athletes in 29 boys and girls sports awards categories as well as special honors like Special Olympics Athlete of the Year, Rising Star and Play of the Year. 

All national nominees must register to provide show information and receive important updates regarding the show. To register, click on the “REGISTER” button on the event website.

Here are the nominees…

2022 All-USA TODAY HSSA Boys Track & Field:

Jordan Anthony

Tylertown High School (Mississippi) — SR

Jaylen Boudreaux

Cane Bay High School (South Carolina) — SR

Connor Burns

Southern Boone County High School (Missouri) — JR

James Donahue

Belmont Hill School (New Jersey) — SR

Cade Flatt

Marshall County High School (Kentucky) — SR

Gregory Foster

The Lawrenceville School (New Jersey) — SR

Casey Helm

Madison High School (Kansas) — SR

Jack Larriviere

Jesuit High School (Louisiana) — SR

Micah Larry

Montverde Academy (Florida) — JR

Judson Lincoln IV

Oakland Mills High School (Maryland) — SR

Gary Martin

Archbishop Wood High School (Pennsylvania) — SR

Tmars McCallum

Carolina Forest High School (South Carolina) — SR

Malik Mixon

Westlake High School (Georgia) — SR

Che Nwabuko

Manor High School (Texas) — SR

Nick Plant

Canfield High School (Ohio) — SR

Rodrick Pleasant

Junipero Serra High School (California) — JR

Jace Posey

Strake Jesuit College Prep (Texas) — JR

Tarik Robinson-O’Hagan

Woonsocket High School (Rhode Island) — SR

Matthew Rueff

Katy Seven Lakes High School (Texas) — SR

Colin Sahlman

Newbury Park High School (California) — SR

Brett Schwartz

Santa Fe Trail High School (Kansas) — SR

Kendrick Smallwood

Mesquite Poteet High School (Texas) — SR

Will Sumner

Woodstock High School (Georgia) — SR

Cyrus Ways

Nease High School (Florida) — SR

Football & track star: 4-star CB Rodrick Pleasant breaks California 100-meter record

Rodrick Pleasant, who has two dozen football offers, set a state record for the 100-meter dash over the weekend.

As the debate of multi-sport athletes vs. specialization rages on, a California football and track star has added a tally to the argument for spreading yourself out.

Rodrick Pleasant, a four-star cornerback at Junipero Serra (Gardena, Calif.), proved that his dominance on the football field extends to the track. Pleasant set the California wind-legal record in the 100-meter dash at the Southern Section Masters Meet on Saturday.

His time of 10.14 seconds at the Southern Section Masters Meet broke the record of 10.25, which was set 37 years ago, according to the Los Angeles Times. For a race to be wind-legal, the tailwind cannot exceed than 2.0 meters per second.

MaxPreps posted a video of the race:

That blistering acceleration and speed helps Pleasant on the football field, where he is ranked by 247Sports as the No. 9 cornerback and No. 71 player in the Class of 2023, and is on the recruiting site’s Composite Rankings as the 19th-best CB and 165-best player. Both 247 and its composite have him as a four-star player.

Pleasant has 25 football offers, according to 247. He cut the list in half in February when he announced his “top 13,” and his first official visit will be to Boston College in June, according to ON3. Other schools of interest include USC, Georgia and Oregon.

As he continues narrowing down his college choices, the athlete with finish up his junior year and continue to compete. Pleasant will take part in the state championships next weekend, according to the Times.

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HS senior Erriyon Knighton becomes 4th-fastest 200m runner in history

Erriyon Knighton, who broke Usain Bolt’s teenage record, set a blistering 200-meter time to break his own record.

Erriyon Knighton gained notoriety in 2021 as he broke Usain Bolt’s teenage U20 200m record and competed in the Olympics at the age of 17, the youngest male U.S. track athlete to do so in 57 years.

On April 30, Knighton broke the U20 record once again. With a scorching time of 19.49, Knighton became the fourth-fastest runner in the world, according to the NBC Olympics Twitter account. Only three runners have eclipsed that time.

NBC added that Knighton’s time is the fastest anyone has run the 200-meter since the 2012 Olympics.

Here is a video of Knighton running in the LSU Invitational in Baton Rouge. Running in lane five, he took a giant lead around the bend and was not seriously challenged after.

The only three people to have beaten Knighton’s time of 19.49 seconds are Bolt, who has done it four times and set the record of 19.19, Yohan Blake (19.26 seconds in 2011) and Michael Johnson (19.32 seconds in 1996), according to NBC Sports.

From here? Knighton returns to class. The night of the LSU Invitational was four weeks out from his high school graduation, NBC Sports wrote.

The Hillsborough High School (Tampa, Fla.) student went professional in January 2021 and is currently an adidas runner, according to NBC Sports.

NIL education, resource platform launched to help navigate recruitment process

With variance in NIL rules state-by-state, Eccker Sports launched a platform to provide information and resources to recruits, families and coaches.

Regardless of stance on whether college athletes should be allowed to profit off name, image and likeness, one facet of the NIL debate is largely agreed upon from both sides: There’s uncertainty in the rules that govern athletes’ allowances, rules that lack structure and vary for high school recruits from state to state.

As it currently stands across the country, there’s widespread variability, with seven states permitting athletes to profit off their name and likeness, 17 states considering changing bylaws and 26 states prohibiting it. The inconsistency adds extra difficulties in recruiting because athletes must know how signing a deal that guarantees college money could affect their high school eligibility.

In Texas, for instance, NIL deals are not allowed for high school athletes. And that restriction — and potentially its lack of clarity in Texas — played a role in the No. 1 football recruit in the class of 2022, Quinn Ewers, skipping his senior year of high school in favor of enrolling at Ohio State early and signing an NIL deal reportedly worth $1.4 million.

“I do think that there’s going to be some lawmakers at some point that are probably talking about it, but it’s going to take years,” said Vandegrift (Texas) High School head coach Drew Sanders. “…Parents want to make sure that they’re not doing anything that would get them in trouble eligibility-wise … This is all brand-new for everybody, so I have really zero experience with this. As a coach, I’m not really sure where to steer them to.”

Uncertainty in the immediate wake of sports legislation is nothing new, whether league-specific like the NFL’s concussion protocol or broad, widespread changes like Title IX.

Ten months since the passage of the NIL policy, the aftermath perhaps most closely mirrors that of the NCAA’s mid-1980s adoption of Prop 48, which mandated a minimum for high school grades and college entrance exams scores. Today, it’s a standard model. But when it was passed, it was controversial.

“It threw the entire market into a tailspin because it really changed the way the NCAA ruled on eligibility,” said Randy Eccker, a longtime figure in the sports digital media and technology landscape. “It completely changed the dynamic, but nobody took the time to go in and educate the high school market on what it meant to them and how to do it.”

While the implementation of Prop 48 lacked the resources for affected athletes, Eccker hopes to lead the charge in this next wave of sports ecosystem education. His platform Eccker Sports announced on Monday the launch of an educational services platform that will target high school students, coaches, teachers and administrators with resources including video curriculum, state-by-state information, tools for coaches to educate their communities and a network of legal, financial and tax experts.

The website is the exclusive high school partner of Game Plan, a platform with partnerships at the collegiate and professional level that provides learning resources, career planning and other developmental programs to athletes.

Pricing for the Eccker Sports resource hub varies state to state, Eccker said.

“Fast-forward even 10 years and this will be a normal part of the athletic landscape and the athletic education landscape, but today, when we’ve gone in and talked to coaches and administrators at the high school level, there’s a lot of fear and trepidation because it’s so new,” Eccker said.

The need for education on NIL is more expansive than finding a deal without affecting high school eligibility. Chuck Schmidt, Vice President and Executive Director of High School for Playfly Sports and the former COO of the Arizona Interscholastic Association, said that high schoolers whose parents’ jobs take them to different states might be unexpectedly affected. Tax obligations must be outlined for athletes. Athletes and families who see a chance for an influx of money but don’t know the laws could be exploited, whether by signing with someone who isn’t qualified, agreeing to have large percentages of money taken by the agent, or accidentally signing a deal to grant likeness to a brand in perpetuity without realizing the long-term implications.

Athletes’ rights took an enormous step forward with the passage of NIL allowances. Still, the lack of structure at a national level is creating confusion and potential long-term, unforeseen consequences. Eccker and Tim Prukop, the Chief Commercial Officer of the Eccker Sports resource hub, hope the new platform can help athletes and families build effective NIL strategies.

“NIL is just thrown around how great it is for kids to be able to do that, but there’s always something else that starts developing after decisions are made,” Schmidt said. “It’s an environment where every state has its own traditions, law, state law and that culture. Education … is going to be very critical to the success of what’s about to come.”

WATCH: Exclusive highlights from the 2021 Eastbay Cross Country Championships

The best moments from this year’s event

The Eastbay National Cross Country Championships took place in San Diego this past Saturday, with Flower Mound (Texas) High School senior Natalie Cook and Hartland High School (Fenton, Mich.) senior Riley Hough taking the tape in the girls and boys races, respectively.

It was another wonderful chapter in the event’s storied history and had plenty of must-see moments throughout the day—which, thanks to Eastbay Cross Country, you can watch below.

Natalie Cook, Riley Hough win 2021 Eastbay Cross Country Championships

Oklahoma State commit Natalie Cook and Michigan State commit Riley Hough won the 2021 Eastbay National Cross Country Championships.

As Flower Mound (Texas) High School senior Natalie Cook ran the final hill of the Eastbay National Cross Country Championships in San Diego on Saturday, she heard her dad yelling toward her that competitors were closing in.

Cook had dominated her last several races, but this wasn’t just a motivational push from her father; the competitors were nearing. In retrospect, Cook had been too aggressive on the first hill and was feeling the effects now.

She pushed herself forward and won with a time of 17:15.0, beating second-place finisher Angelina Perez by almost five seconds and ending her high school career at the top of the prestigious national race.

“I just had to give all I had left in me to try to finish it. It was hard but I’m really happy on how I finished,” Cook said. “The second loop was really hard and I gave it all I had in me. I’m really happy for my last cross country race.”

Photo: Bruce Wodder @ PhotoRun.net for East Bay Cross Country

The boys winner, Hartland High School (Fenton, Mich.) senior Riley Hough, had similar issues on that hill.

“Going up it the second time was, all of us in the front were basically so tired from it, we were like crawling up the hill,” he said.

Hough had observed patiently from behind the pack before slingshotting ahead on the downhill.

“This course is hard. I wanted to see what these people were going to do, because we’re all near each other’s skill level. Anyone can do almost anything,” Hough said.

He grabbed a lead on that downhill burst and would not relinquish it, winning with a time of 15:11.4.

Photo: Bruce Wodder @ PhotoRun.net for East Bay Cross Country

This ties a bow on a pair of dominant seasons from Hough and Cook. Hough won 15 5Ks with Hartland, a stretch that included a personal record of 14:37.1 in the Portage Cross Country Invitational in October.

He is now headed to Michigan State. Hough said that even after he narrowed down his top two schools to in-state MSU and Michigan, the choice was extremely difficult to make.

“It basically just came down to which team I liked more,” he said. “I ended up liking Michigan State a little more, I blended in with them a little more.”

Cook’s finish was a proclamation of her return from a navicular stress fracture in her foot. The injury cost her a year of running after her sophomore season, according to the Dallas News, but she bounced back this season by winning six of the seven 5Ks she participated in, including one in each of these last three weekends. Just one week before the Eastbay Championships, she set a personal record of 16:04.0.

Cook, who became the first Texas girls runner to win the national title, is Oklahoma State-bound.

“They’re building a great team and I love Coach Dave (Smith) and Coach Anna (Boyert-Thorp) so much,” Cook said. “They want to win nationals and I want to be a part of it.”

Here are the top 10 finishers for the boys and girls races:

Girls Eastbay Championship Results

  1. Natalie Cook, 17:15.0
  2. Angelina Perez, 17.19.7
  3. Jenna Mulhern, 17:20.8
  4. Karrie Baloga, 17:29.1
  5. Riley Stewart, 17:30.3
  6. Kate Peters, 17:34.0
  7. Sophia Kennedy: 17:34.7
  8. Mia Cochran: 17:35.1
  9. Sophia Nordenholz, 17:36.7
  10. Caroline Wells, 17:38.4

Full results here.

Boys Eastbay Championship Results

  1. Riley Hough, 15:11.4
  2. Kenan Pala, 15:14.8
  3. Gavin Sherry, 15:17.3
  4. Zane Bergen, 15:20.2
  5. Kole Mathison, 15:22.3
  6. Tyrone Gorze, 15:26.4
  7. Shane Brosnan, 15:27.9
  8. Izaiah Steury, 15:27.9
  9. Marco Langon, 15:28.1
  10. Emmanuel Sgouros, 15:29.4

Full results here.