Girls Track: Lindblom’s Shamier Little achieves gigantic feat
Updated: May 19, 2012 8:43PM
CHARLESTON, Ill. — The Hollywood ending would have had Shamier Little leaving O’Brien Stadium Saturday afternoon with four state records and a first-place team trophy.
The real-life ending was almost that good. The Lindblom junior set Class 2A records in her first three races of the day on Saturday then finished runner-up in the 200 meters to Springfield Southeast’s Charday Crawford — herself a four-time champ in the sprints and sprint relays.
That added up to 38 points, giving Lindblom third place in Class 2A, the school’s first state trophy in a girls sport and its first of any kind since taking second in boys gymnastics in 1955. Southeast won its second straight title, 63-46 over Walther Lutheran.
And that hardware was actually Little’s motivation as she motored around Eastern Illinois University’s blue track on a hot and steamy afternoon.
“I don’t think I actually thought about the records when I was running,” Little said. “I was just [thinking], ‘Thirty points, 40 points, I want to go after that.’ ’’
Little started out by winning the 100 hurdles in 14.02 seconds, breaking the Class 2A record of 14.16 that she tied in Friday’s preliminaries. That was her personal high point: “It’s always been my goal ... to break 14. That’s the closest I’ve ever come in all my years. I have to break 14 in my next race.”
Then Little had a break before coming back to win the 400 in another record, 54.19. Fourteen minutes later, she was back on the track to run the 300 hurdles. The result: another win, another record of 42.80, breaking her own day-old mark.
After a slightly longer rest, Little went out once again and didn’t have quite enough left to kick past Crawford (24.14) in the 200. She did run 24.48, .09 faster than her prelim time.
“I didn’t think I’d win the 200,” Little said. “But I had faith and I think I did [well] with that, too.”
Walther Lutheran won its second state trophy in two years after finishing runner-up in 1A last spring. MaShayla Kirksy led the way with a first in the long jump (19 feet, 3 inches), a third in the triple jump (37-8) and an anchor leg on the runner-up 400 relay team (48.01).
Rich South won the 2A 1,600 relay for the third straight season, this time in a class record of 3:52.64. CiErra Garrett, Taylor Kriha and DeAsia Garrett have been on all three winning relays and were joined on Saturday by sophomore Ninaa Edwards.
Another record-setter was Seton’s 400 relay team of Jasmine Gardner, Mykel Adams, Nancy Jeanty and DeJanae Terry, who ran a time of 48.51 for a new Class 1A mark.
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