Alliance super sophomore Brendan Zurbrugg snags four wins at EBC Track and Field Championships
Alliance’s Brendan Zurbrugg will likely remember this quadruple for a while.
Don’t be surprised if he experiences a few more over the next few years.
Zurbrugg recorded four individual wins in Saturday’s Eastern Buckeye Conference Track and Field Championships at Marlington. The league MVP defended his EBC title in the 110-meter hurdles and earned his first conference title in the 300 hurdles. He also won the 100 and 200 dashes.
Few sophomores can say they became a four-time conference champion in just a few hours.
“My goal was to win everything I did in the meet,” Zurbrugg said. “I knew I had the opportunity to. I wanted to get as many points for my team as I could.”
More: 2022 Stark County high school track and field season best times and distances
Zurbrugg is one of Stark County’s top hurdlers. He lowered his county-best season time in the 300 to 39.18 seconds Saturday. He ranks second in the 110.
The 300 win came a year after he was runner-up at the EBC meet.
“Ever since last year, I’ve been thinking about winning that race,” Zurbrugg said. “I was looking forward to going out and doing that today.”
The turnaround time between the 110 hurdles and 100 is only a few minutes. Even though the 800 is sandwiched between them, achieving wins in the 300 hurdles and 200 is a bigger hurdle.
It did not affect Zurbrugg one bit.
“The 110 hurdles gets me kind of loose and ready to run another sprint,” Zurbrugg said. “The 300 hurdles to the 200 is definitely the worst one. The 300 hurdles takes so much out of you. You’re still tired by the time the 200 comes around.”
Zurbrugg usually does not run the 100 and 200 with both hurdles. The plan was to take him out of the 400 relay and do it Saturday so Alliance could accumulate more points.
The goal now is for Zurbrugg to extend his season beyond next week’s Division I district meet in Austintown. He could not compete last year because of a pulled hip flexor suffered at the EBC meet.
“It was really nice to just run all year healthy,” Zurbrugg said. “Now I get the opportunity to run at districts and hopefully go farther.”
Zurbrugg recorded 40 of the 133 points Alliance earned. The Aviators finished second, 23 points behind champion Salem.
It was a successful day for Marlington distance runner Bella Graham. The junior successfully defended her EBC titles in the 1,600 and 3,200 on her way to becoming girls MVP. She also won the 800 after finishing runner-up a year ago.
Graham will enter the postseason ranked No. 1 in the county in the 1,600 (5:07.45). She ran a 5:13.14 Saturday.
Salem won the girls team title. Marlington finished second.
Reach Mike at mike.popovich@cantonrep.com
On Twitter: @mpopovichREP
This article originally appeared on The Repository: Marlington distance runner Bella Graham wins 3 events at EBC meet
