In the long and glorious history of the Loyola track and field program … hold on, scratch that first sentence.
Yes, there is a track and field program but its history is neither long nor particularly glorious. So let’s tone down the adjectives a little bit.
The Flyers have only fielded a track team for less than 20 years and while there have been pockets of success, it’s not as if other teams are shaking in their spikes when Loyola gets off the bus.
All of this is a roundabout way of putting into perspective what happened on a soggy track at Bernie Moore Stadium on the campus of LSU Saturday.
The Flyers have built a pretty impressive track program at the district and regional levels, but the LHSAA state championships are a different animal. There’s no shame in that; especially since there is no select/non select goofiness at the state meet. Which makes the competition deeper and stronger than just about any other sport.
Loyola’s state level success has been mostly with distance running and an occasional field event (Luke Jackson was a two-time javelin state champion in the late 2010s).
Until Saturday.
Meet Loyola sophomore Ty Walsworth.
Actually, you might have already heard of him from his impressive football season at wide receiver (23.0 yards per catch and 14 touchdowns) and because he was on his way to a big basketball year before a severely sprained ankle cost him a majority of the season.
But when Walsworth lined up for the start of the Class 4A 100-meter finals, he had already made Loyola history. The Flyers had never had a single runner in any state sprint final. Ever.
It’s also highly doubtful that any of the other competitors were overly concerned about Walsworth since he was the No. 7 seed and was assigned to the wasteland known as Lane 1.
“The nerves were kicking in pretty good when I got on the starting line,” Walsworth said. “At first, I wasn’t too confident because I didn’t have too good of a run at regionals (11.07). We prepared hard during the week, but I still wasn’t too confident.”
Until the gun went off.
Walsworth timed it perfectly and clearly had the best start of the eight competitors. “He was leading after 40 meters,” said Loyola track coach Sherrod Lewis, “and that was all she wrote.”
Well, not quite. There was a little bit more writing to be done. At the finish line, Walsworth went into his lean and looked to his left to see Lutcher’s Ashton Stark also there. In fact, the race announcers called it for Stark and the straight-on camera footage was so caught off guard that Walsworth wasn’t even on the screen.
But he knew it was close. Very close. Very, very close.
Both had run a 10.6.
Both had run a 10.63.
But Walsworth had run a 10.636 to Stark’s 10.639.
That’s three-thousandths of a second difference. Google will tell you that three-thousandths of a second is “imperceptible to the human eye.” But since LSU uses college-level timing at its facility, the human eye wasn’t in play.
“There were some nerves having to wait those five seconds (for the results on the scoreboard),” Walsworth says. “When they did, I was all excited.”
“It was an amazing finish,” Lewis said. “I was ecstatic.”
Let’s go back over this: In a race where 0.1 seconds makes a huge difference, Walsworth carved off 0.4 seconds off his previous, non-wind-aided best to win the 100-meter state championship race from the outside lane in miserable conditions for a school that had never even had an entry in the event. Of course it’s a school record since the only other sub 11-second 100 in Flyer history was wind-aided.
You got all that?
(Perhaps as a by-product, the Loyola girls’ 4×100 sprint-relay team also won a school-first gold medal an hour later.)
“It feels great and it’s an honor to be the first state champion (in the 100),” Walsworth says. “To get out there and perform like that on the LSU track is amazing.”
You think?
Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com