Bloomington North's Kyle Clark makes his college choice
Kyle Clark went coast to coast looking at colleges, from Boston University to San Jose State, where his dad Ernie is a sprints coach. Turned out what he was looking for was right in the middle.
"I think I visited eight schools and I looked at more than that," the Bloomington North senior cross country and distance standout said. "And I looked at more than that. It was difficult.
"I took the visits and narrowed it down from there. After visits, thinking about everything, I told every place I visited, 'No.'"
He was specific in what he was looking for in a school and mostly its track program, wanting to put more emphasis on that sport over cross country at the next level.
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"I was looking a lot at their coaches and the team and how they were progressing into the future," Clark said. "How they thought they would coach me. I was pretty sure I wanted to go to a pretty large school, but I talked to some pretty small schools and ruled those out.
"It was just kind of the whole feel. I didn't know that would matter, but the feel of a campus was way different in Boston, than in California and the Midwest. I decided I liked it better around here, with the people everything, how it felt."
Illinois entered the picture, reaching out to Clark in late October. He would go on to add a second state medal in cross country to go with the one he earned in the 1,600 at the state track meet last spring while breaking the school record.
Clark liked BU, but not the idea of being in the middle of a big city. The Illini, located in Champaign-Urbana and boasting one of the top engineering schools in the country, beckoned.
"It hit everything I was looking for," said Clark, who signed his commitment forms in mid-December. "They just got a new head coach (Petros Kyprianou, who won two NCAA titles at Georgia) and had multiple champions in track. He's not the distance coach, but with how I'd like to focus more on track, I'm more focused on how he's going to try to build the whole track team.
"It'll be a smaller team but it takes everyone to be successful. The team was really nice and my distance coach (Sarah Haveman, who runs the cross country program), I really liked her. And with the campus, they've just built a new outdoor track and they're redoing the indoor track and there's a new building for the track team and they're building a new cross country course before next year. There's a lot going on."
And former Edgewood standout Annalyssa Crane, in her second year at Illinois, was able to provide insight as well.
"I did talk to her some," Clark said. "She's been through a lot of the restructuring and the new staff coming in. I saw her on my visit. Her sister is going to Belmont where my sister (Kayli) goes."
Clark is looking at doing the 1,500 and up, perhaps steeplechase at Illinois. For now, indoor track and outdoor season are right around the corner, a lot less stressful with his college choice made.
"It's a big relief," he said. "It was kind of hard to balance everything with with school and running and doing all those visits. It took a toll on me and it's great not to have to worry about it and focus on what I want to do in track."
Contact Jim Gordillo at jgordillo@heraldt.com or 812-331-4381 and follow on Twitter @JimGordillo.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Bloomington North's Kyle Clark makes his college choice
