SPRINGDALE -- Tyler Browne admits he still has a lot to learn when it comes to the 800 meters.
Sure, he won the event at both the 1A-1 Conference and Class 1A state meets.
All-NWA Media Boys Track Runner of the Year
Class 5A and Below
Tyler Browne
School: Haas Hall
Class: Junior
Notable: Won 1A state championships in the 400, 800 and 4x800 relays. … Placed sixth in the 400 and ninth in the 800 at the Meet of Champions. … Helped the boys track team to a third place finish at the state meet.
But the strategy of perhaps the most difficult race at a track meet is something the Haas Hall junior admits is still very much a work in progress.
"I still haven't figured it out completely," Browne said. "It's hard. I guess every time, you learn something new running that race."
Mastiffs track coach Rebecca Moll, who has led the track program at the Fayetteville-based charter school, said Browne wasn't always a middle distance runner.
"We started him out in the 100 and 200 in the eighth grade, and he was winning everything, and I was like, 'You have a little more giddy-up in your go.'"
So Moll moved him first to the 400 meters, where he has dominated on his way to winning gold at the 1A state meet, and later the grueling 800. In addition to golds in the 400 and 800, he also ran the opening leg on the 4x800 relay to help the Mastiffs to a third place team finish. He ran the 800 in 2 minutes, 1.04 seconds, and came back with a 51.23 in the 400.
Brown's efforts this spring earned him the All-NWA Media Runner of the Year award for schools in Class 5A and below.
His accomplishments are all the more impressive considering Haas Hall does not have a track facility. The track team trains where it can, like Walker Park or at local elementary schools, Moll said.
"We run on the sidewalk, in the grass, just about anywhere," she said.
Both the girls and boys track teams at Haas Hall won conference titles this spring. That success has fueled growth in the program that has swelled from just six participants the first year Moll started to more than 30 in the high school program now.
The team does not shy away from top competition, running against Class 7A schools every week during the spring.
"What's interesting is that we'll go to a lot of the bigger meets, and sometimes the kids are like, "well, we're hanging in there," Moll said, "but when we go to conference, we see great success."
Browne will expand his track meets during the next school year to include indoor. He hopes to run track in college, with Arkansas being his first choice.
But first he hopes to learn and master the nuances of the 800.
"Sometimes I started at the back and I realized that was too slow, or sometimes I've started with the front of the pack and realized the pace was too fast," he said. "You try as hard as you can, but once your body stops, it just stops."
Sports on 06/05/2014