9 hours ago
Bullis closes another dominant season with six titles at New Balance Nationals
Bullis track coach Joe Lee still remembers the anticipation he felt at New Balance Nationals in 2017. The Bulldogs won multiple national championships that spring, his fifth with the team. That was when Lee realized his program was starting to build something special.
But Lee said he never would have imagined the kind of sustained success the Bulldogs have basked in since. After adding six national titles at the New Balance outdoor meet in Philadelphia over the weekend, the Bulldogs are up to 51 championships during Lee's tenure.
'This year has presented a new challenge,' Lee said. 'When you have this level of success and talent, then the question is 'Where do you go from here?'… The bar was raised pretty high for us, but every time the bar is raised, our kids stepped up.'
The Bullis girls' team won four of those six titles, prevailing in the 4x100-meter, 4x200-meter and 4x400-meter relays as well as the shuttle hurdles. The Bulldogs set the meet record in the 4x100 (44.80 seconds), and their shuttle hurdles title was their fifth in a row at New Balance Outdoor Nationals; that's the longest active streak in any event.
While many teams use the same athletes for the sprint relays, Bullis used seven runners across the 4x100, 4x200 and 4x400. Only one of those seven, senior Tatum Lynn, was on the shuttle hurdles team.
While the Bullis girls' team had several athletes win multiple championships, senior Sydney Sutton, a Florida signee and the girls' indoor track All-Met Athlete of the Year, nearly finished with as many as five. Sutton was part of the 4x100, 4x200 and 4x400 relay teams and was second in the 400 and the 400-meter hurdles. She finished a combined 0.14 seconds behind the winner of those races and bested the previous meet records in both. Her times (51.23 in the 400 and 56.04 in the 400 hurdles) are top-10 all-time.
'There's no limits for [Sutton] because she can hurdle, she can sprint, she can relay,' Lee said. 'She even wants to long jump — I told her no. But she can do anything.'
On the boys' side, the Bulldogs won the 4x400, and junior Quincy Wilson, who won his third All-Met Athlete of the Year award in the indoor season, won the individual 400 title in 45.37. Bullis was aiming to break the 4x400 national high school record, which it set at Penn Relays in April. The near-100-degree heat made that difficult, so the Bulldogs had to settle for a meet record (3 minutes 8.28 seconds), breaking their mark from a year ago.
Wilson anchored the relay Sunday, following senior Alexander Lambert, sophomore Cameron Homer (who was third in the 400) and senior Colin Abrams.
'It's been a different season for [Wilson], because when you're 16 years old and you go back home with an Olympic gold medal … I mean, the world changes for you,' Lee said. 'He's handled it with such grace and class and dignity and honor.'
The other local champions were Archbishop Carroll and St. John's. The Lions won the boys' 4x200, and junior Vance Harris won the high jump. The Cadets won the mixed 4x400.
Carroll set a meet record in the 4x200 (1:23.64) despite adding two new runners to the lineup: Senior Farraj Al-Amin and sophomore Jonas Frone joined juniors Keenen Davis and Jake Odey-Jordan. The quartet bested Bullis by 0.31 seconds.
Harris struggled early in the high jump, twice failing to clear 6 feet 5½ inches. But he stuck with it and won the title by clearing 6-9½.
'It was just really, really a balanced effort in the field and on the track,' Carroll Coach Rafiu Bakare said. 'The team just came together and performed at their highest level at the moment when you needed it.'
