Bane captures AAU bronze medal

By BILL JOHNSON, My Clay Sun

St. Johns Country Day School state track champion Mallory Bane captured third- and fourth-places in the 800- and 1,500-meter national championships during this week's AAU Junior Olympics in Detroit.

Bane, who won the 800-meter 1A state high school championship for St. Johns in April, ran a personal record 2:20.28 to capture the bronze medal in the national sub-youth 800 final on Wednesday. The next day, with admittedly "dead" legs, she still managed to capture fourth place in the 1,500.

Bane, 13, said her first national-level competition was a "great experience for me. It's a lot bigger than any event I've ever been in before."

The Spartan eighth-grader was seeded first in the 800-meter event and second in the 1,500 after the preliminaries, but competitors she had beaten handily in those early races ran phenomenally faster times in the finals to win.

Bane actually led in both the finals before being overtaken. The most dramatic race was the 800, according to Bane's coach, James May.

Bane led the event until about the last 100 meters, when she was overtaken. She then stumbled on the inside rail and fell into third place, but still somehow managed to set a personal record.

"I was a little disappointed I didn't post a better personal record in the 800," she said. The 2:20.28 was 0.57 faster than her state championship time of 2:20.85.

May said Bane was definitely beaten for the gold, but she still could have taken second place and improved her personal record time by three to four seconds if not for the stumble, he said.

In Thursday's 1,500-meter final, Bane told May her legs felt kind of "dead" after putting everything into the 800 the day before. Still, she took the lead at about 300 meters and held it to about the 1,000-meter mark, when her legs began to fade.

May said expectations grew pretty high when Bane won the high seedings in the national events (first in the 800 and second in the 1,500), "but third and fourth in the nation is definitely a pretty special feat," he said.