By Mike Clark
The oldest Public League boys track championships record — by far — was the 23-foot, 11-inch long jump effort by Senn’s Samuel Portmess in 1927.
Even the record-tying effort by Englewood’s Lonnie Brown in 1971 is one of the oldest ones in the book. Ditto for Brown’s 24-5 (also in 1971), which was the best effort by a Public Leaguer in any meet.
All those marks are history now, though.
Kenwood senior Parrish Hartley Jr. shattered them with a remarkable 24-11 leap on a cool, breezy May 17 in the Public League Meet at Rockne Stadium. It’s the best mark in the state this spring and No. 9 nationally, according to the Athletic.net database.
“Me and my coaches have been practicing a lot on the mistakes I’ve been making,” Hartley said. “Now today I finally perfectly executed, so that’s what it led to.”
He figured if everything came together, something like this was possible.
“I jumped a lot of foul marks that were (23-11.5 to 24-3.25),” Hartley said. “Then I (saw) my teammates all on the side, cheering me on. I knew it was going to be something big.”
The jump was just shy of the IHSA state-meet record of 25-0.25 set by Cahokia’s Ja’Mari Ward in the 2015 Class 2A preliminaries. The all-time Illinois record is 26-11, set by Rockford Jefferson’s Jaiko Woodson in 1976.
“It felt like all my hard work finally paid off,” Hartley said.
The record-setting effort didn’t go unnoticed by Hartley’s teammates.
“That jump took me by such surprise,” teammate Armond Boulware said. “My jaw just dropped. I couldn’t do anything but scream.”
Hartley also won the 100 meters in 10.64 seconds and was second to Boulware in the 200 at 22.03. They were both on the 4×100 relay team that finished first before being disqualified for an exchange-zone violation.
Boulware was runner-up in the 100 (10.67) and in the 400 (49.26), which was won by teammate Logic West with a PR of 49.11.
“I was a little disappointed we DQ’d in the 4×1,” Boulware said. “We’ve got to touch up on that. (The) 100, got a nice PR in that, 400 matched my PR. Had a good day.”
The Broncos had another meet record from senior Jahari Horne, who went 38.83 to win the 300 hurdles. He also won the 110 hurdles in 15.14.
“Previously I ran the 110s (and) wasn’t too happy about the time, so I knew I had to take it personally in the 300s,” Horne said.
The 4×100 disqualification produced a 12-point swing in the team scoring, with Lane moving up from second to first and Kenwood getting shut out. That made for some late drama, with the Broncos’ quartet of Horne, Taylor Shurtliff, Neil Courtney and West winning the 4×400 relay to beat out the Champions 133-123.5 for their third straight city title. Young (108.5) finished third.
For Lane, Kyle Nono won the triple jump (42-7), while Julian Vickery, Tyler Nygren, Kendrick Lyles-Henderson and Joaquin Lopez won the 4×100 in 42.95.
Young had firsts in the 3,200 from sophomore Amilo Rajandram (9:55.94) and in the shot put from Nikola Dake (47-11.25). The Dolphins won the sprint medley relay in 1:37.54 with the team of Aiden Belin, Bryce Blythe, Quinn Duhon and Aaron Champion.
For Payton, Preston Ellis won the 800 (1:56.94) and Declan Slavin won the 1,600 (4:26.28), while Ellis, Slavin, Vaughn Collier and Tra’Monti Williams won the 4×800 in 7:56.89.
Mather had two champs: Christian Perez in the discus (136-8) and Steve Edwards in the high jump (6-2.75).
Photos by Ashley Harris/OSA
