by David Frank
Despite his victory two weeks ago in the Oregon State Meet, there were still many who doubted that Kenny Klotz was the best high school distance runner in Oregon. After today's race, it is difficult to imagine that there are still many clinging to that position.
His training over the last two weeks indicated that Kenny was ready for another super effort at Nike's BorderClash; the only question was whether Kenny himself knew he was ready. Having won the State Meet with a strong move a mile out, the goal for this meet to was to make a winning bid in this 4500m race over just the last 400m. One pitfall of the "sit and kick" strategy for a relatively untested athlete is the thought that the race will be extremely easy until the kicking begins; of course, many other athletes will be attempting to make it "un-easy" for the kickers.
The BorderClash begins on one of Nike's soccer fields. The Oregon and Washington runners start at opposite ends of the field and, at the shooting of a cannon, race towards each other before turning and blending into a single group. As the runners exited the soccer field and headed to the bark chip trail, the race was shown on close-circuit television; early on it was difficult to distinguish the runners, but soon it was clear that Kenny was among the early leaders -- although, true to his plan, he did not actually lead.
After a mile four runners were grouped together: Kenny, Mead's Laef Barnes (4:09 mile last year, 3rd at the WA State Meet), Eisenhower's Robbie Barany (2nd in WA), and Ashland's David Morgan (only 10th at the OR State Meet, but one of the top runners in OR all season). Strung out behind them --- but certainly still in striking distance --- were a gaggle of talented athletes, including Oregonians Michael Maag, Devin McDaniel, Isaac Stoutenburgh, Kenyon Neuman, and Washingtonians Kelly Spady (WA State Champ), and Jeff Helmer.
After a bit more, the quartet had made some space for themselves, and it appeared that the winner would come from this group. Inside the final kilometer Barany was dropped. By the time they entered the soccer complex, Kenny had taken the lead. He opened up a few yards on Barnes with Morgan another step back, but Morgan came storming back to pass both as Kenny fell to third with about 200m to go. Within 100m Kenny reclaimed the lead by about three meters, but Barnes -- the 4:09 miler -- fought back. Holding his technique beautifully, Kenny held off the Mead star by a scant six tenths of a second in becoming the first non-senior boy to win the BorderClash.
While the victory was not terribly surprising given Kenny's recent training and emotional attitude, it was a huge step in his development to have run another strong race against top notch competition. In the Oregonian's account of the race Kenny said, "I knew I had to do something at this meet to make my state meet not look like a fluke." While it was certainly true that the rest of the state must believe in Kenny now, it is much more important that Kenny truly believes in Kenny after this race.
Next up is the Footlocker Western Regional meet on December 4th on the famous Mt. SAC course, where Kenny hopes to finish in the top eight and become Central Catholic's second ever national qualifier (Galen Rupp precedes him.)
Full results can be found at www.dyestat.com; the Oregonian article is at www.oregonlive.com.
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