Prep Track & Field: Burgin's Beckerson third in Class A boys 1,600

LOUISVILLE — The mile took everything out of Alex Beckerson.
The Burgin junior finished third in the Class A boys 1,600-meter run Thursday at the KHSAA State Track & Field Championships at the University of Louisville.
But that race, which he finished in 4 minutes, 35.48 seconds, basically made the rest of the day a struggle.
“That wind didn’t help either on that back stretch. It drained me of most of my energy in that mile. And then I did a 2:08 800, and that took the rest of it,” said Beckerson, who failed to medal in either the 800 or 3,200. He also ran a leg of the 3,200 relay for the Bulldogs.
“The 800 wasn’t too bad, but the 2-mile after the first mile, I was just, ‘You’ve got to finish, you’ve got to push and finish.’”
After failing to score in last year’s state meet, the Danville boys placed in four events Thursday.
Senior Marcus Brown pulled a hamstring during the 200-meter dash at the Admirals’ regional meet last week, but he returned Thursday to earn two medals.
“It’s not feeling too good, but there’s not much I can do about it now. I iced it a lot and did a lot of resting,” said Brown, who finished seventh in the 100 in 11.45 seconds, and teamed with Tryston Ford, Max Ray and Jawan Grey to finish seventh in the 400 relay in 45.41 seconds.
“It feels good (to medal),” Brown said. “But we know we can always do better.”
Grey also placed seventh in the high jump with a jump of 5 feet, 10 inches.
Senior Chase Berry teamed with Karl Hempel, Calvin Steber and Matt Wagner to finish eighth in the 3,200 relay in 8:43.48. Berry, who also ran the 800 and 800 relay, said he wanted to get one medal in his final state meet.
“I think we all ran good. I ran a little harder than I usually do because I wanted to place. I wanted to give everybody else a chance to win something because that was their only event,” said Berry, who is going to run at Tennessee Wesleyan next year. “It’s tough to score in that open 800, and I knew we had a better chance to score in this event.”
Two more Burgin boys medaled Thursday, but neither was pleased with his performances. Travis McEachern finished seventh and Nick Beckerson placed eighth in the discus.
“I got to the finals and I scratched my first two throws in the finals, I threw them both out of bounds,” said McEachern, who had his best throw of 124-4 on his last throw of the finals. “So I was really nervous, I didn’t want to scratch my third one, I wanted to place. And I was so worried about getting it inbounds that it just wasn’t that good of a throw.”
“If me and Nick had thrown out PRs we would have been fifth and sixth instead of seventh and eighth.
Nick Beckerson, whose throw of 122-8 got him into the finals, said he and McEachern just never could get it going.
“I was stressing out, Bad throws, me and Travis both,” he said. “ We had bad throws in the prelims. And I had to throw 122 to get into the finals, but it never really got much better.”