It seems only fitting that Ankeny senior Tyrese Miller got to run the final lap of the final event in the 112th Drake Relays on Saturday afternoon.
After all, he spent most of the weekend on the blue oval, leaving his competitors in the dust.
Miller completed a spectacular meet by helping the Hawks to a third-place finish in the boys’ 4×400 relay. He teamed up with his brother, Tyson Miller, as well as Jack Belding and Jake Bosch to post a time of 3:23.49.
“I got out pretty hard,” said Miller, who ran a 48.91 anchor leg to lift Ankeny from fifth place into third. “The backstretch I was making progress, but coming around that second curve the wind was just crazy. It kind of pushed me down a little bit, but I still had a pretty good finish. I’m proud of the team.”
Mason City’s Kaden Tyler lunged across the finish line to win the event in 3:21.55. Cedar Falls was the runner-up in 3:21.59.
Belding ran the second leg in 50.18 to lift the Hawks from seventh place into fourth. He then handed off to Bosch amid a sea of other runners on the second exchange.
“Everybody kind of came in at once,” Bosch said. “But Jack came through good, and everybody did what we needed–we just came up short. I felt like the heat went out fast for mine. My goal was just to get Tyrese close, because I knew he could close it.”
Miller passed Johnston’s Nick Bechtel and Valley’s Will Johnson on the final lap. But he didn’t gain much ground on Tyler and Cedar Falls’ Cayden Schellhorn, who both ran sub-50 splits as they battled to the wire.
“We’ve had a busy weekend between the four of us,” Bosch said. “Tyrese had a sweet run for the finish, but he’s ran like six events before this. We’re coming for state. It’ll be good.”
Miller became the first boys’ athlete to sweep the 100 and 400 at the Relays on Friday. Earlier on Saturday, the Iowa recruit also anchored the Hawks to a runner-up finish in the 4×100 relay.
“You hope to win everything, but I didn’t realistically think I was going to win the 100 and 400,” Miller said. “It’s a pretty big accomplishment.”
Miller may not be done collecting awards. He is one of the top contenders to be named the Relays outstanding male high school athlete.
“That’d be pretty amazing,” he said.
In the 4×100, Miller brought the Hawks from fifth place into second. He combined with his brother, Colin Kadolph and Belding to post a time of 42.60 seconds.
“It was hard,” Belding said. “We messed up our handoffs in a couple of places, and that probably cost us a little bit of time.”
Southeast Polk set a meet record in the 4×100 during the preliminaries on Saturday morning, posting a time of 41.82. The Rams then won the final in 42.00.
Belding said he believes Tyrese Miller could have chased down Southeast Polk’s Cole Filloon if he’d gotten the baton a little closer to the lead.
“Oh, 100 percent,” Belding said. “He could have done it. We just need to practice our handoffs. We’ll get them at state.”
Ankeny Centennial also qualified for the final in the 4×100. The Jaguars placed sixth in 43.22.
The team consisted of Alec Schneider, Connor Welsch, Owen Gates and Nick Severson.
“We were aiming for a top-three spot, but we’ll take a top-six place,” said Gates. “The weather wasn’t good either, but those other teams were fast.”
The skies were overcast but dry most of the day. However, late in the afternoon, the wind picked up and a drizzling rain began to fall.
“The weather has been crappy the whole season,” Gates said.
Earlier on Saturday, Ankeny placed sixth in the 4×800 relay. The foursome of Abel Squires, Truman Patterson, Levi Hill and Bosch was clocked in 8:06.31.
The Hawks were seeded 10th in the event.
“We’re pretty happy with that,” Hill said. “The times are super close together, so we were happy to move up with our position and beat some teams that were a few spots ahead of us coming in. That was great.”
Hill ran the third leg in 2:00.32, lifting the Hawks from 10th into seventh place. Bosch then passed two more runners while posting a split of 1:58.21 on the anchor leg.
“We were very capable of running that kind of time,” Hill said. “I think all four of us definitely have more in us, and we’ll be going for a bigger PR at the end of the year.”
Sioux City North won the race in a time of 7:48.21.
