Four hundred meters.
It’s one lap around the oval track at any local high school. A pretty basic setup in the sport.
For veteran Batavia coach Dennis Piron, though, that race has always held special meaning.
“It’s a big deal to me,” Piron said.
There’s good reason — then and now.
The 400 was Piron’s event when he ran track for the Bulldogs as a member of the 1983 graduating class. He set a program record of 49.5 seconds as a senior.
That stood for 26 years, the target of many of Piron’s early runners before Bai Kabba obliterated the mark in 2009 by running a 47.49.
Kabba’s standard still tops Batavia’s all-time list. Piron’s best now ranks fifth. The top four include his oldest son, Peyton, whose 49.3 in 2015 now ranks third.
Fast forward to Saturday when Piron’s team scored 37 points and topped Warren and Edwardsville — tied at 30 each — to win the Class 3A state championship.
Piron has coached track and football for 32 years at his alma mater, leading the football team to state titles in 2013 and 2017.
It was the boys track program’s first state team trophy.
“Sometimes, I don’t realize how long I’ve been coaching,” Piron said. “We’ve had lot of teams with a chance to get a team trophy, and this year, we had the depth to get it done.”
Perhaps it was fitting then that one of the keys was the performances of a strong group of 400 runners led by seniors Jonah Fallon and Jacob Hohmann.
The outcome wasn’t certain until the final race Saturday — the 1,600 relay, featuring four runners taking a lap around the track.
Fallon anchored the relay to a first-place finish with a time of 3:19.81, preceded by seniors Vincie Solano and Hohmann and junior Andrew Gerke.
Gerke replaced Quintin Lowe, who ran the third leg Friday to help the unit qualify and gave it his all Saturday in a leg of the 3,200 relay that did not score.
“We felt we could win the 1,600 relay if we took care of business,” Piron said.
The coaches did a lot of shuffling in an effort to get the most out of their qualifiers, with more than one individual sacrificing personal glory for the team.
“I would argue we were maybe the best track team all across the board this year,” Piron said. “We were a very tough team to beat in a meet.”
The atmosphere for the final event was electric, with Batavia’s relay quartet buoyed by teammates and a large fan following.
“It was really crazy,” Piron said. “Like going into overtime in a football game.”
His team entered the event ranked fourth in the team standings with 27 points, trailing Edwardsville (30), Minooka (29) and Warren (28).
“We knew it was close but that’s all,” Solano said. “We knew we needed to do well if we were going to win.”
Fallon got the baton trailing in a tight race.
“He was second by a step or two and got the lead early in his lap,” Solano said. “Jonah and the Hinsdale Central were pretty close down the final stretch.”
Fallon held on for the win.
“He ran a great anchor,” Piron said. “It was pretty emotional.”
Edwardsville and Minooka were not in the race and Warren finished eighth, losing eight team points to the Bulldogs, who picked up 10 with the win.
Earlier in the day, Fallon took second in the 400 with a personal-best 48.49 that keeps him second on his school’s all-time list in the event behind only Kabba.
Those efforts gave Fallon, an NCAA Division II Colorado School of Mines recruit, a hand in 18 of his team’s 37 points.
Hohmann finished eighth in the 400, joined Fallon on the 1,600 relay and also ran a leg of Batavia’s fifth-place 400 relay to help account for 17 team points.
Senior Jalen Buckley got things started, winning the triple jump with a program-record 47 feet, 1 3/4 inches on his final attempt. It topped Lamarr Justice‘s record, set in 1991, by one-half inch.
Solano and Gerke each ran legs on the 1,600 and 400 relays and were joined on the 400 relay by senior Scot Parker, who also finished eighth in the 200.
“The 400 is kind of the main race we train from,” Solano said. “We use it a lot in intervals. It helps in shorter and longer races and keeps you from getting tired.”
Full circle as Piron might say.