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Hopkins MN Wins DyeStat 2019 Boys National Dual Meet ChampionshipPublished by
A Special Season For Hopkins MN Ends With Memorable Roadtrip To New Balance Nationals Outdoor And DyeStat Dual Meet National Championship By Doug Binder, DyeStat Editor Nobody from Hopkins really wanted the season to end. That’s why seven members of the team and a pair of coaches drove 19 hours in head coach Nick Lovas’ minivan and a district-issued Suburban to compete at New Balance Nationals Outdoor. Once in North Carolina, the group spent the week commuting 75 minutes back and forth between Greensboro and assistant coach Austin Salargo’s grandparents in Carthage. In order to stay within the rules of the Minnesota High School League, the coaches dug deep into the equipment closet to find old uniforms that hadn’t been worn this spring. And Hopkins wrung every moment out of the Greensboro trip. Senior star Joe Fahnbulleh, the best sprinter in Minnesota history, proved his mettle at NBNO by winning the 100 meters and 200 meters and was named Boys Track Athlete of the Meet. But Hopkins didn’t win the DyeStat Dual Meet National Championship on the shoulders of Fahnbulleh, a University of Florida recruit, alone. Fellow seniors like Eli Hoeft, Jaylen Champion, Sam Leervig, Wyatt Lubarski, James Klecker and Yakob Ekoue all made big contributions. Hopkins penciled out to be the best team in the U.S. this spring, edging 2018 champion Hoover AL 71-65 in the finals of the dual meet championship tournament. “The bond wasn’t created this year,” Fahnbulleh said. “It’s been growing and growing. What’s special about this year is we had a lot of seniors on the team. So it was like, this is do-or-die time. Let’s go out there each race and do our best. The drive went up. The intensity of practice went up. The commitment level went up, too.” It’s worth noting that Hopkins barely made the DyeStat bracket. The only teams that are considered for the hypothetical tournament are state champions. Incredibly, Hopkins won Minnesota AA boys team title by two points. In a state meet where first place is worth 12 points and the top nine in every event score, Hopkins went into the 4x400 relay, the last race of the meet, trailing by 10 points. Hopkins won it in 3:19.37 and overtook Rosemount for the title, 78-76. It was the Royals' first title since 2014 and second overall. It wasn’t a great meet for Hopkins. A week after breaking the all-time state record in the 4x100 relay, Hopkins flubbed a hand-off and got DQ’d at the state championships. “I think we could have (clocked) 40-point-high in the 4x100,” Fahnbulleh said. The squad poured its commitment into the 4x200 at the state finals instead, and drove the all-time state record down to 1:25.58. That performance held up for No. 16 in the country this year – behind 12 squads from Texas and a few others. After taking two Hopkins girls teams to the old Nike Track Nationals meets in Eugene in 2010 and 2011, Lovas went home with an idea. He decided to brand Hopkins, Minnesota's hotbed for high school basketball, with something else. He came up with "Track Town Minnesota." "I wanted to come back home and for elementary school kids to see high school kids wearing a shirt that said 'Track Town Minnesota,'" Lovas said. "I wanted little kids to say 'I live in a track community, a running community.'" On Sundays during the season, 200 kids ages 2-12 gather at the trac to run, jump and throw with 40 members of the high school team. "The (kids) bring their parents and grandparents and we probably have 500, 600 people out there on Sunday nights," Lovas said. That sort of enthusiasm has helped fuel the program at Hopkins, which is located west of Minneapolis. “What makes the program special is the sheer amount of passion that our coaches put in, our athletes put in, and our support staff,” Salargo, the team’s sprint coach, said. The idea to drive to New Balance Nationals wasn’t new. The team would have done it last year but couldn’t scrape the money together. This time, the district approved some support. “For myself and the kids as well, it was an extra special ending to an extra special season,” Salargo said. “It was a way to get to spend another week with those boys. We took seven boys, all sprinters, but we could have taken more. The biggest thing we got out of it is that we found we could be around each other for 24 hours a day for seven days and not get sick of each other. The bonds we created through track and field have gone beyond track and field.” When the meet was over in Greensboro, and the adrenaline of the day had worn off, Fahnbulleh admits he got emotional about seeing it end. There was a still one more drive home. The group made it six hours, to Ohio, by Sunday night. Fahnbulleh’s legacy, at the school and on Minnesota, is something that will be defined over time. He was a tremendous runner who matured rapidly as a junior and senior, and demanded to know from his coaches how every workout connected to the next in order to make him better. “(The guys in the group) genuinely like each other,” Salargo said. “They bought into the culture and worked their butts off. What Joe helped bring to it is a very contagious attitude and atmosphere of greatness. It was cool to see our second- and third-best sprinters being able to train with a literal world-class athlete.” For Fahnbulleh, the national titles in the 100 and 200 were rewarding, but the conversations in the van, the swimming at Salago’s grandparents’ house, the final chance to compete with his friends, was priceless. “Those (winning) experiences, they showed that the hard work has been paying off,” Fahnbulleh said. “I can’t get those experiences anywhere else. And I really cherish them. The medals, the rings, those are cool, too, but they are materialistic things I don’t pay much attention to. It’s the memories I will have with my team that I will treasure most.” Regional semifinals BOYS | GIRLS
DUAL MEET CHAMPIONSHIP FINALS Hopkins MN 71, Hoover AL 65 The Minnesota Class AA champions worked for three years to showcase a special senior class this spring in order to puncture Wayzata's stranglehold of the state title and break a couple of state relay records. But the event on Hopkins' calendar that really set the Royals up for success in the DyeStat national dual meet tournament is Minnesota's one-of-a-kind True State Championship. At the True State meet, put on by the state's coaches, each team enters three athletes per event and scores accumulate based on placing. It's an event that encourages, or demands, that a team spread its resources across all disciplines. In the hypothetical national final against 2018 Hoover AL, it was the races above 800 meters that made the big difference for the Royals. Eli Hoeft, a senior headed to Minnesota in the fall, led 1-2-3 sweeps in the 800, 1,600 and 3,200. That was 27 points that Hoover couldn't make up elsewhere, despite a pair of 9-0 victories – in the triple jump (Kyle Smith, John Watkins and LJ Hill) and 400 meters (Jonathan Martin, Dorian Austin and Julian Fore). Hopkins got a lift from thrower Yakob Ekoue, who won the shot put and the discus. It also got wins from sensational sophomore George Jackson in the 110-meter hurdles and 300-meter hurdles in high quality contests against Hoover's Kennon Johnson and LJ Hill. Due to the four-event limit rule, Hoover's Martin ran the 100, 200, 400 and 4x400. A 4x100 for the Buccaneers was plugged into the scoring that didn't include Martin, but Hopkins would have won that event regardless. Hoover's quality in the jumps was nearly enough to overtake Hopkins. In the pole vault, high jump, long jump and triple jump, the Buccaneers held a 29-7 advantage. And in the triple jump, Joe Fahbulleh's 46-2.50 didn't even score. Fahnbulleh, the straw that stirred Hopkins' drink, was impactful as always. He was the reason why the Hopkins team was extraordinary. He is the greatest sprinter in Minnesota history and he was surrounded by a talented group of athletes who filled every lane. Fahnbulleh won the 100 meters, 200 meters and powered the 4x100 relay to victories against Hoover. Most years, those aren't events that Hopkins holds an advantage against Hoover.
Meet Results
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