Galesburg sends 7 girls to state as boys prepare to host sectionals
If Syriah Boyd has her way, she’ll become an alchemist at the IHSA Girls State Outdoor Championship, which will be held May 16-18 in Charleston.
Simply put, the Galesburg High School senior sprinter wants to turns her bronze medals into gold.
At last year’s Class 2A state meet on the campus of Eastern Illinois University, Boyd turned in a pair of third-place finishes, clocking times of 24.81 in the 200-meter dash and 57.34 in the 400. She’s already bested those performances this year, and she hopes the adrenaline boost she receives from running against the state’s best sprinters will drop her times even further.
“I want to upgrade my medals from bronze to gold,” said Boyd, who late last year committed to continue her track career at Tennessee State University.
Her future coach with the Tigers, Chandra Cheeseborough-Guice, has plenty of hardware in her trophy case, including a pair of gold medals in relays at the 1984 Olympic Games.
Her present coach, Jody Chapman, noted that Boyd hasn’t been challenged often while competing in her home region of the state, including the May 9 Princeton Sectional, where she breezed to victories in the 100, 200 and 400, winning by nearly three seconds in the latter event. That will change at the state meet, and that’s OK.
“Syriah’s a very competitive person,” said Chapman. “She knows what the competition is and what she has to do.”
She does, indeed. Off the top of her head, Boyd named two sprinters – Cahokia’s Kayda Austin in the 100 and 200 and Mahomet-Seymour’s Madalyn Marx in the 400 – she will have to beat in order to work her alchemy. Austin is the only 200-meter sprinter ranked higher in Class 2A than Boyd, while Marx is one of two ahead of her in the 400. The separation in both events is slim.
And it’s not just two golds that Boyd is after. She didn’t qualify for the finals in last year’s 100, but her top time of 11.97 seconds is ranked second behind Austin in Class 2A.
Breaking through the 12-second barrier was an important milestone for Boyd, and she thinks she can get where she wants to be if she bests 24 seconds in the 200 and 56 seconds in the 400.
“I had a big PR running in the state meet last year, and I’m hoping that will happen again this time,” she said.
If Boyd lives up to her individual rankings coming into the meet, Galesburg could have a top 10 team finish. The Silver Streaks can finish even higher if they get points from the rest of their qualifiers.
Four fastest cousins in the state?
One of the Streaks’ other entries is likely the best all-relative relay team in Illinois. The Herchenroder triplets – Ella, Grace and Taylor, whose mother is multiple All-American sprinter Heather Furrow Herchenroder – are joined on the 4x400 squad by their cousin, Lily Furrow.
Their runner-up sectional time was 4:11.63. And the quartet figures to make noise at future state meets, too, as Furrow is a sophomore, and the triplets are only freshmen.
Grace Herchenroder qualified in the 300 hurdles, which Furrow won in 48.45 to add to her victory in the triple jump, which she claimed with a PR of 34’11.
Ella Herchenroder was part of the winning 4x100 squad, along with Boyd, Antonia Kisler and Khloe May. The quartet posted a season-best time of 50.08.
GHS boys with state hopes
The boys schedule is a week behind the girls, meaning coach Craig Hillier’s squad is gearing up for a sectional meet this week, which Galesburg will host for the first time at its new-and-improved F&M Bank Stadium.
Hillier has several athletes he believes can qualify for the May 23-25 boys state meet.
“Two relays are doing really well – the 4x800 with Dominic Cantarini, Andrew Peterson, Luke Thomas and Plamedi Nseka, and the 4x400, with Andrew, Plamedi, Jamar Range and Demetrius Wilson.”
Cantarini, Peterson and Nseka were on last year’s 4x800 squad that placed 10th at state, while Nseka medaled in the 400 a year ago, placing fourth.
At Friday’s Western Big 6 Conference meet, the 4x800 squad blew away the rest of the field, finishing in a season-best 7:59.20. Both Peterson and Nseka turned in sub-1:57 splits. Nseka also won the WB6 crown in the 400 in 50.33.
Both Cantarini in the 1600 and Nseka in the 400 have PRs that are comfortably ahead of the qualifying standard – they simply need to beat the standard again when the sectional pressure is on, or place first or second in their race.
Hillier marveled at the progress Cantarini has made in his GHS career.
“We were looking on Athletic.net at the times from his freshman year – they weren’t good,” said Hillier of the senior. “He had a time over 13 minutes in the 3200. I said, ‘You remember when you ran this?’ Now he runs it in under 10. He’s come a long way.”
Other Silver Streaks with a chance to make it to Charleston are triple jumpers Josiah Carter and Rahkim McCellan, who’ve both topped 43 feet, and thrower Gilbert Lemus, whose PR of 53’8-1/4 is well over the shot put standard, though he’ll face a stacked sectional field, featuring four of the state’s top seven in the event.
This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Galesburg sends 7 girls to state as boys prepare to host sectionals
