Quad-Cities a hot spot for top hurdlers

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By Shannon Heaton | Wednesday, May 14, 2008 11:45 PM CDT | () comments

It is not just running. It is more than that.

Ask those who should know which track and field event is considered the hardest — the competitors — and a majority immediately come back with one word: Hurdles.

Those who do it aren’t surprised by that. They know about the art of it, the science of it, and they’re all too familiar with the pain of it. Most of them are drafted into it as soon as they go out for track. Surprisingly, most fall in love with it almost immediately, making it their primary focus.

“It all started in seventh grade. I was taller and had longer legs than most of the other kids out for track,” Moline’s Shawn Ledbetter said, echoing themes found in many local high school hurdlers’ pasts.

“My coach at the time put me in (hurdles), and I set the John Deere (Middle School) school record. I was always very competitive, and winning made me keep doing it, so I stuck with it. I’ve always loved doing it, and there hasn’t been a time that I haven’t wanted to do it.”

Ledbetter burst onto the scene as a freshman, earning Western Big Six champion honors in his first varsity season. He’s not alone among Quad-City hurdlers who are threatening to score big prizes at this and next weekend’s state track meets in Des Moines and Charleston, Ill.

A strong hurdling scene

In many parts of Iowa, Plesant Valley’s Susan Rodriguez would be one of that region’s best hopes for state gold. With the times she has run, she would be one of the most talked-about track athletes in those regions.

Here, she is somewhat glad that Davenport North’s AG Bradford — the Quad-City Times’ Female Athlete of the Year, and the state’s No. 1-seeded hurdler in the 100-meter high and 400-meter low hurdle events — is going to be gone soon.

“I’m kind of used to her, but I am kind of tired of losing to her,” Rodriguez said. “She’s the state’s best, so it’s not embarrassing (to finish second). I feel like I always get better when I run with her.”

There is Bradford, Drake Relays champion Ethan Holmes of Clinton, Illinois-ranked hurdlers Ledbetter and Ciara Turner of Rock Island and United Township’s Josh Pope, who won one Western Big Six hurdle race and finished second to Ledbetter in the other. Those five are the cream of what is a bumper crop of hurdlers that cuts across classes, states and genders.

“There’s no way I could have run the times that I’ve run without the local competition that’s pushing me,” Riverdale’s Alexa Allen said. “I like being pushed to run even faster, run better times.”

In addition to being a competitive lot, the area’s hurdlers are certainly a hard-working group.

“It’s somebody who loves to be at practice, that’s for sure,’’ Pleasant Valley assistant coach Jeff Paul said of what makes a successful hurdler. “They’re the last to leave, especially early in the season. Their drill work comes when other guys have gone home.

“I’m always saying, ‘I’m sorry to keep you past 6:15.’ There’s just not enough bodies to get that drill work done, so it comes at the end of practices.”

It takes a certain amount of work ethic just to be a hurdler.

“We all got to test out what we wanted to do, and I thought hurdles looked good,” Fulton’s Allison DeWeerdt said. “I’ve put in a lot of summers ever since, and that’s worked wonders for me.”

The art and science

Hurdlers come to the event mainly at the gentle insistence of their coaches. They stay because, many times, they find within the event something that satisfies them, something they didn’t know existed before they started.

“You see hurdling as a rhythm. When you’re in (a race), you don’t see that, you just think about what you need to do. Afterward, you see different rhythms that guys have,” Pleasant Valley senior Drew Shradel said.

“There’s art in the way that we move. Certain drills are almost like interpretive dance. You feel it when you have perfect form, when you’re fast over the top, low, quick. You watch a perfect hurdle, it’s almost graceful, and when you find that art, you want to keep it going.”

There is science to it, too. Go too high over a hurdle, and momentum is lost. Cut the top too fine, and there’s the chance of knocking it over. That can lead to many things, at best. Every hurdler has a funny falling story, even if experiencing the story wasn’t all that funny.

“I was introducing the hurdles to all of our freshmen one time, just kind of strutting my stuff out there,” Holmes said. “It was my first hurdle of the season, and my lead leg didn’t even clear it. I fell face-first. I just got clobbered by it.

“There’s not a day at practice where you don’t get a bloody knee. But that’s just hurdles.“

Running “just hurdles” can mean as many things to hurdlers as there are hurdlers.

“Every time I run, my mom always calls out ‘bunnies!’ to me,” Allen said. “She’s always said to me to run like bunnies. They don’t really run, they jump over things.”

To shuttle, or not

Illinois hurdlers don’t have the opportunity to compete in a hurdles-only relay event like their Iowa counterparts. Still, the presence of the shuttle hurdle relay is received with a mixed bag of enthusiasm.

“Shuttle hurdle is my favorite event this year. We’ve been doing really well, and we always have a lot of fun. We room together at Drake and state,” Rodriguez said of her relay. “At districts (last weekend), we were .02 (seconds) behind the school record, but we’re looking forward to breaking that at state.”

Find a hurdler who finds the good in the shuttle — and there are many — there are purists who would like to see the event undergo what charitably would be called a redesign.

“Last year, I did the shuttle every meet except maybe a few, because last year we had a better chance at placing,” Holmes said. “I don’t know, though ... I don’t favor it. In middle school, the shuttle was the thing that they stuck kids in.”

Holmes would prefer the current shuttle relay to become a 440-meter high-hurdle shuttle relay, or a 1,600 low hurdles relay. Shradel, too, wouldn’t mind seeing the event take some tweaks.

“Right now, it’s almost like a sprint relay anyway,” Shradel said of the event, in which he is qualified to run at state. “I wouldn’t mind seeing intermediate hurdles instead of lows. You could have some quick guys in it, still, but they would still have to have a hurdle form.”

Proof in the pudding

It is tried and true. Physical ability combined with work ethic still means good things. Holmes’ Drake Relays experience is a perfect example of that.

“Winning Drake definitely makes me feel confident. Not a day goes by without thinking about that experience. Every day, I wake up, I look at the newspaper with my picture on it. It still shocks me when I look at it,” Holmes said, admitting that it was a toss-up between track and soccer when he had to make a choice several years ago.

Good choice there.

“Hurdles isn’t just about speed. It’s about technique, too. I’m not the fastest kid in the state when it comes to the sprints. There’s just so many fast guys out there,” Ledbetter said. “But when I do the hurdles, I’m one of the best in the state.”

Contact the sports desk at (563) 383-2285 or at sports@qctimes.com.