CdM's Max Douglass races to school record in 1,600 meters at state meet
The weather was a hot topic of discussion heading into the CIF State track and field championships, but in many cases, it was the athletes that brought the heat last weekend.
Corona del Mar coach Bill Sumner looked at the temperature and saw it was a scorching 101 degrees when Max Douglass — the Sea Kings' distance running star — toed the starting line at Clovis Buchanan High on Saturday.
Douglass had dug in during the state preliminaries on Friday to secure the school record in the boys' 1,600 meters. It could have been the last four laps of an illustrious high school career.
That qualifying effort earned the Notre Dame commit a spot in the state final, a chance he took advantage of to drop his time to 4 minutes 7.65 seconds in a sixth-place, medal-winning performance.
Sumner shared that he resorted to a trip to the hardware store to drive home race strategy during the postseason. He first utilized traffic cones and then string to make Douglass exercise patience in picking his desired spot on the field from the start.
'I put a string from the cut-in mark to the 200 lane one,' Sumner said. 'And I said, 'Max, you cannot cut in. You have to stay on the right side of that string for the whole workout.' …
Sumner said that Douglass noticed a difference right away. The message was clicking.
'I said, 'That way, you get to pick your spot of where you want to be,'' Sumner recalled. 'When you get to the end of the first 180 [meters], you're going to say, OK, let me run there, and then you go there.' He's a strong enough kid, he gets to do that if he's fast enough.
'We practiced that for three weeks, I had put a string out, and he would not cross over that string. … Not the last meet, but the two meets before it, he stayed out there, came over, got third place or second place, whatever he wanted, and just tried to stay there as long as he could.'
Douglass shed nearly two full seconds off his time from the day prior, creating separation between himself and Jim Robbins, who had held the CdM record in the event at 4:10.74 since setting the standard in the Southern Section Masters Meet in 1988.
Sumner added that both Robbins and Brian Hunsaker, the Sea Kings' record-holder in the 3,200 at 8:53.7 since 1975, reached out to Douglass after the race.
Douglass received an invitation into the Nike Outdoor Nationals at Hayward Field in Eugene, Ore.
'If you would have told me he was done Sunday morning, I was fine,' Sumner said. 'Every goal that he set, we reached — every single one. Everything that he wrote down, we did. It's like, 'You've got nothing to prove, you got the school record, you got a 1:53 [in the] 800, you got a sub-nine-minute two-mile [time].' That's it. That's a lot of stuff, but he still wants to give it one more try, man. One more try before he goes on to be a big college guy.'
Ocean View's Jack Paavola also closed his career on the podium, claiming eighth in the boys' discus throw with a mark of 174 feet, 4 inches.
The Seahawks senior's state performance was just half a foot off his career-best throw at the Masters Meet. Paavola has committed to Harvey Mudd.
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