After Ripping 1:50.42 In The Class 4A 800, Lutes Runs Jaw-Dropping 45.8 Split On 4x400 Relay

By Lori Shontz for DyeStat

Brynn Kleinke photo

EUGENE - His mom always knew he was an 800-meter kind of guy. His coaches knew it, too.

Bodey Lutes, however, wasn’t ready to go there. He liked the 400, and he was good at it, winning the Oregon state Class 4A title for Marshfield High School as a sophomore and a junior. And after finishing second in the 800 as a sophomore, he didn’t run it as a junior, instead running the 200 meters and finishing third at state.

“Bodey has always just liked everything fast, ever since he was a little kid,” said his mom, Amy Nickerson, who won 11 OSAA state titles as a middle-distance runner for Coquille High School in the late 1990s. “He wanted to run fast, he wanted to drive fast, he wanted to do whatever fast. I think he just enjoyed it.”

But Lutes also knew what was out there – Steve Prefontaine’s school record in the 800 meters (1:54.3), which had stood for 56 years. He wanted to break it, and he did that at the Coos County meet on May 2.

“I was like, ‘Hold on – that wasn’t too bad,’” Lutes said. “So I kind of just stuck with it after that.”

Lutes got the best of both worlds Saturday at his final Oregon state championships, excelling at middle distance and a sprint.

First the won the the 800 meters in 1:50.42, the best time in Oregon this season and No. 21 nationally.

Then he split an astonishing 45.825 for his anchor leg of the 4x400 relay and propeled Marshfield to the title in 3:19.94, a 4A meet record by more than two seconds. It is likely the fastest relay split ever run by an Oregon prep.

But even with all that, Lutes said breaking Pre’s school record is “No. 1 on the achievement list.”

“When I think of the GOAT of running, it’s Pre,” Lutes said. “I respect how he ran and what he fought for and, honestly, everything. He’s my No. 1 idol and the person I look up to. Even being in the conversation of Pre and his records, it means the world to me. It means more to me to be in that conversation with Pre than beating his record.”

Lutes had always known about the Pre mural on Highway 101 in Coos Bay, where his extended family lives. He began his track career when he was living in Arizona as his mom finished a nursing program, and when they moved home before his sophomore year. In Coos Bay, he became more steeped in the Pre lore.

He’s got at least 10 Pre posters. His mom said he’s watched “the Pre movies” over and over. And he heard a lot about Steve Prefontaine from coaches and community members, which gave him what he called an understanding of who he was and what he fought for and the rebel he was.”

He’s always told his mom that someday he’d run the 800, and this year turned out to be it. His mom, though, thinks the true motivator might have been his grandmother, Elaine Nickerson, who ran at Portland State and has run several marathons, including Boston, and wanted to see her grandson run another 800.

Lutes entered Saturday’s final hoping to break 1:50, but he was nine seconds ahead of the field and wasn’t quite able to do it on his own. “I even did a little lean at the end,” he said. “It turned into a tumble.”

He was happy with his 1:50.46, especially because he still practices like a sprinter. His mom said he hadn’t trained anything longer than a 300-meter interval until recently, when he added some 400-meter intervals. And the 800, of course, is an aerobic race.

“The fact that he threw this down with zero aerobic training is phenomenal,” Nickerson said.

The team chooses a quote for the year, and this year’s was perhaps Prefontaine’s best known sentence:

“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.”

Lutes said he took that seriously, especially when people asked him, say, about districts: Are you going to win, or do you want to run fast? At every chance, he says, he wants to run fast.

Which is another of the reasons he pushed so hard in the 800.

“I could have run 1:54 or 1:53 and won,” he said. “But what would be the point?”

Seems like something Pre might have said. It was no coincidence that on the weekend that was widely recognized for being the 50th anniversary of Pre's death, that Lutes put maximum effort into the state meet and kept the Pirates relevant.

Lutes, who is committed to Western Oregon, relaxed between races, visiting with his family, walking around a bit, eating a Cliff bar and warming up. He said the 4x400 has always been his favorite event – he says the speed and the physical contact make the race like the Daytona 500. “Full NASCAR,” he said.  

He also knew he had split a hand-timed 45.99 -- “maybe 46” -- recently.

“There’s always a little demon on your shoulder,” he said. “You just ran an 800. It’s a little windy. But as soon as I got with my boys, I was like, ‘We got this.’”

Lutes got the baton with his team in second place, about two seconds beyond Henley. The crowd roared as he picked up speed and propelled his team to victory.

“That was the best,” Lutes said. “I couldn’t have drawn that up any better.”