PREP BOYS TRACK: Alton’s McGoy sets 100 record at Winston Brown Invite

Plainfield North edges Edwardsville by one point for title

Greg Shashack, gshashack@thetelegraph.com

 Published 5:44 pm CDT, Saturday, April 20, 2019

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Greg Shashack / The Telegraph

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Alton’s Deonte McGoy (middle) beats Collinsville’s Jermarrion Stewart (right) and O’Fallon’s Dorian Brown to the finish in the 100 meters Saturday at the Winston Brown Invitational track meet in

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EDWARDSVILLE – Winston Brown narrowly missed qualifying for the 1956 U.S. Olympics track team in the 100 meters.

That event in a meet named in his honor on the track named in his honor on a sunny Saturday at Edwardsville High School lost some of its luster with the late scratch of Plainfield North’s Marcellus Moore.

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But the 100 still produced a meet record with Alton’s Deonte McGoy winning in 10.74 seconds in the 10th running of the Winston Brown Invitational at the Winston Brown Track and Field Complex.

“That felt good,” McGoy said breaking the record of 10.75 set in 2012 by Collinsville’s Tyrone Echols. “It was a great start and I finished hard. … I was wishing Marcellus Moore was running because every time I race against him, I PR. But that’s fine, I got first and I’m satisfied with that.”

Moore beat McGoy in the Belleville West Invite on April 6 in a time of 10.36, with McGoy runner-up in a personal-record time of 10.61. But Moore, the invite’s featured performer and defending Class 3A state champion in both the 100 and 200, was scratched from those races after running the anchor leg of North’s victorious 4x100 relay.

The Plainfield North Tigers still managed to claim the team championship of the 21-team event. The six-points earned from a third-place finish in the 4x400 relay – the meet’s final event – erased a one-point deficit and gave North a one-point victory over Edwardsville, which ran fifth in the relay for four points.

North scored 99 points, with Edwardsville at 98. Crete-Monee (76), O’Fallon (74) and Triad (69.5) rounded out the top five teams. Alton scored 29 points and placed 10th. The first nine Brown Invites were all won by Edwardsville (five) or Cahokia (four). North finished three points behind Edwardsville here last season.

The Invitational is named for Brown, a New Orleans native who was a school record-holder in the 100 and 200 at Eastern Illinois University. Brown, a longtime Edwardsville Tigers track coach, was the first African-American teacher hired in the district and was a teacher at EHS for 33 years. He died in 1998.

McGoy nearly pulled off the sprints sweep that was expected from Moore. McGoy overtook Collinsville’s Jermarrion Stewart in the final 50 meters, but Crete Monee’s Ricky Johnson won from lane seven in 21.52. McGoy was second in 21.83. Stewart, runner-up in the 100 in 10.82, was third in the 200 in 21.87.

“I felt like I could have hit the curve a little harder,” McGoy said of his 200 trip. “I was really racing with Stewart because he was on the lead. That other kid just came out of nowhere. I got second, I’m fine with that.”

The Redbirds also picked up points from senior Ju’Qui Womack, who was fifth in the triple jump at 41 feet, 10 inches. Sophomore Gerard Bruce was fifth in the 800 in 2:04.42 and junior Cassius Havis ran sixth in the 1,600 in 4:41.56.

“We were really happy with Gerard Bruce,” Alton coach Jeff White said. “He’s really starting to be a really good 800 runner for us.”

Alton moved Havis out of the 800 to the 1,600 to get more distance in preparation for postseason. “We’re looking at Cassius as an 800 runner,” White said. “But in some of these meets, we have to look at the big picture. For him, getting in a longer event was pretty important.”

Edwardsville picked up big points from its distance corps. Senior Roland Prenzler held off a late push from Belleville East freshman Byron Jones to win the 1,600 in 4:28.29. Jones was second in 4:29.24 with the Tigers junior Jack Pifer third in 4:33.86. The Tigers also ran 3-4 in the 3,200 with Todd Baxter and Kurt Brase, and the 4x800 relay of Zach Walters, Pifer, Prenzler and Max Hartmann was second in 8:15.80.

Edwardsville got a first-place finish from Reed Kaburick with a throw of 140-2 in the discus. Kenyon Johnson’s leap of 22-9 was second in the long jump. Two of the Tigers’ freshman/sophomore relays — the 4x400 and the 4x800 — ran second.

McGoy’s mark in the 100 was one of three meet records to fall. Freeburg senior Zach Pluff won high jump at 6-10, eclipsing the 6-8 cleared by Cahokia’s Anthony McRoberts in 2015 and Granite City’s Marcus Mason in 2010. And Crete-Monee’s Victor Cameron’s time of 14.01 in the 110-meter high hurdles took down the 14.12 by Mount Vernon’s Spencer Allen in 2012.