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Allen’s Jonathan Simms is latest Dallas-area sprinter breaking records, chasing history

Simms has run a school-record 46.35 this year, which is the best time in the nation for 2023, and would have been good enough to win the Class 6A state title at the last four UIL state meets.

In 2002, Arlington Lamar’s Jeremy Wariner won the Class 5A state title in the 400 meters, running 46.52 to set the stage for a prodigious career.

Wariner went on to win two NCAA championships at Baylor, he was a five-time world champion (two in the 400 and three in the 4x400 relay), and he won three Olympic gold medals (one in the 400, two in the 4x400 relay). He owns the sixth-fastest 400 time in world history, according to Track & Field News, clocking a 43.45 in 2007.

This year, there is another Dallas-area athlete running breathtaking times in the 400. Allen’s Jonathan Simms has run a school-record 46.35 this year, which is the best time in the nation for 2023, it would have been good enough to win the Class 6A state title at the last four UIL state meets, and it is faster than Wariner ran at state in 2001 (47.08) and 2002.

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The amazing part is that Simms is only a sophomore in high school.

“This early [in the season] I was just hoping to get a 47 low or a high 46,” Simms said. “My goal at the start of the season was 45 by the end of the season, but I might have to adjust that goal, so maybe a 45 by state, if I can get to state.”

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A 45-second 400 would give him a shot at the state record, which is 45.19 by Mansfield Timberview’s Aldrich Bailey in 2012. Only three athletes in U.S. history have run under 45 seconds while in high school, according to Track & Field News, with the national record standing at 44.69.

Does Simms have a chance to become an Olympian?

“I really do think he has that potential,” Allen coach Jon Cockroft said. “This past month, running a 47.27 and then turning around and turning in a 46.35, he’s got more in the tank for sure.”

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Simms is just one example of the great sprint legacy that exists in the Dallas area. It goes well beyond Wariner, 200-meter Olympian Roy “Robot” Martin from Roosevelt, 200- and 400-meter Olympic gold medalist Michael Johnson from Skyline and NCAA 100-meter record holder Sha’Carri Richardson from Carter.

In the last three state meets that were held (there was no state meet in 2020), Dallas-area athletes have won 37 state championships and had 34 state runner-up finishes in the 100, 200, 400, 4x100 relay, 4x200 relay and 4x400 relay for boys and girls combined in classes 6A through 4A. D-FW produced 15 state champions and 16 state silver medalists in those sprint events last year alone.

“We have some incredible talent here, all up and down I-35, but I think the coaching community here [makes the difference],” said June Villers, who won eight team state titles as the girls head track coach at DeSoto before leaving in 2022 to become the coach at Waxahachie. “We treat track like it is no different than we would treat football and basketball. It is not just a byproduct of the other sports. The community here as far as the coaches, we share ideas. We know we have to go up against each other all the time, and that makes us better.”

Villers helped DeSoto become the first school to win five consecutive girls team state championships in the UIL’s largest classification from 2016 to 2021. DeSoto ran three of the top six times in national history in the 4x100 relay in 2019 — including a national record 44.24 — and its 4x200 relay team ran the 10th-fastest time in U.S. history (1:34.87) in 2017.

“I think it’s a mindset here that we want to be the fastest, we want to be the best, and we have to train and do certain things that aren’t easy to be good,” Villers said. “I had a lot of talent at DeSoto to work with over the years, but they took that talent and did the work they needed to do to take it to the next level.”

Pierre Goree of Duncanville, center, sprints to the finish line at the UIL Track & Field...
Pierre Goree of Duncanville, center, sprints to the finish line at the UIL Track & Field State Meet in Austin, Texas on Saturday, May 14, 2022. Goree won the boys’ 100-meter dash in a time of 10.22 seconds.(Angela Wang / Special Contributor)

Last year, Duncanville had the state champion in the boys 100 meters — Pierre Goree — and also won state in the 4x100 relay with a nation-leading time of 39.98. Duncanville became the sixth school in U.S. history to break 40 seconds in the 4x100, and that victory plus a second-place finish in the 4x200 helped the Duncanville boys finish second as a team at state.

Goree is now playing football at SMU and is running track meets unattached because SMU doesn’t have a track team, but Duncanville has another candidate to win state in the 100. That is junior Caden Durham, a four-star running back who ran for 1,960 yards and 36 touchdowns while leading Duncanville to the Class 6A Division I state title in football this season.

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Durham ran a wind-aided 10.44 last week in 50-degree temperatures, and his 10.49 from March 4 is tied for the sixth-best wind-legal 100 time in the nation. Last year, he ran the open 100 at only one meet because of a hamstring strain, and by the time he returned from the injury, he could only run the 4x100 and 4x200 relays in the postseason meets.

“My goal by the end of the year, I’m trying to hit 10.1, 10.2,” Durham said. “Being able to practice with [Goree last year], and watching him in practice, it really shows how good you can be and how good you are right now. When you’re watching a legend practice, you want to be a legend, so you want to do the things he does.”

Duncanville has run 40.89 in the 4x100 relay, which ranks 10th in the country, and its 4x200 team ranks sixth nationally at 1:26.00. The Dallas area owns four of the top 15 times in the nation in the 4x100, with Red Oak (40.79), Duncanville, Mansfield Lake Ridge (40.98) and DeSoto (41.02), and Duncanville has four athletes — Durham, Brayden Williams (10.52), Jaylen Washington (10.59) and five-star football recruit Dakorien Moore (10.63) — who rank in the top 100 in the nation in the 100.

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“We start with a lot of acceleration work, zero to 20 to 25 meters and move out from there,” Duncanville coach Clayton Brookins said. “We’re not doing a bunch of repeat 400s and 300s when we come to the track meet to run 100 and 200. We’re also in the weight room for the power and plyometrics that we put a big emphasis on.”

On the girls side, Duncanville ranks No. 5 in the nation in the 4x100 relay (46.14), No. 4 in the 4x200 relay (1:38.29) and No. 6 in the 4x400 relay (3:49.62). Aaliyah Gipson has run 11.51 in the 100, which is tied for fifth in the nation among all fully automatic times.

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On Twitter: @DMNGregRiddle

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