The Brownstown Central Middle School 4x100 relay team of Brock Dean, Domanik Cody, Kenyan Prince and Lindan Lanier broke the school record with a run of 49.27.
Dylan Wallace | The Tribune
Later today, the Brownstown Central Middle School 4×100 relay team of Brock Dean, Domanik Cody, Kenyan Prince and Lindan Lanier will be racing in the Indiana State Middle School Championships meet in Terre Haute.
The group of Braves qualified after running a fast time at the team’s conference meet a couple of weeks ago, and that time of 49.27 just so happened to break the school record.
“We were really close for a couple meets. We were a half-second away a few times, and we finally got it our conference meet,” Prince said.
Dean, who runs the first leg of the relay, could tell from the race that the Braves ran a good time.
“I feel like we had our hand-offs down. It just felt good,” Dean said.
Dean starts off the race and hands it off to Cody, who did some work to pass Austin at conference.
“The kid I was going up against from Austin, he was in front of me, so I had to speed up to get him so we could get first place,” Cody said.
After Cody’s leg, he passes it off to Prince.
“I’m really fast around the turns,” Prince said.
The anchor leg is Lanier, and he said he enjoys being the last leg.
“I feel pressure, but it pushes me to go faster,” Lanier said.
Dean and Prince are both eighth-graders, while Lanier and Cody are both in seventh grade. All four of them said they plan to run track and field in high school.
“I think it felt good since it was our last year running at the middle school,” Dean said of breaking the record.
Like Dean, Cody also thought everything felt good the day they broke the record, and they had to wait for their coach’s time to see if they actually got it.
“It felt really good, and then coach told me the time and we got excited,” Cody said.
In addition to running the 4×100, Prince runs the 100 and 4×400, Dean runs the 200 and does long jump, Cody does high jump and Lanier runs the 100 and 200 and does high jump.
It was a record that stood for 24 years, and even though half of the relay team will be split up next year with Dean and Prince going to high school, the two coming back hope to have another good season next year.
They said it’ll be hard to re-break that record, but the Braves are proud that their names will now be up on that record board at BCMS.
“It definitely has a place in my heart where I can look back at it and always know that we broke the record because it was held for 24 years,” Cody said.
“I think it will be amazing to look back, and I think we might hold that record for a while,” Lanier said.