By Ryan Lynch
He gets down into the blocks, he hears on your marks …. set ….Bang! All that exists is the 10 hurdles between him and the finish line.
Senior Marcus Bright has been a star for the Delta track team this spring. Bright’s season came up short last year where he didn’t run his best race in regionals.
He ran a 15.11 second race at regionals in the 110-meter hurdles, placing him sixth, which didn’t earn him a spot to compete in the state finals.
This left him angry and created a bad taste in his mouth, which then pushed him to hopefully not come up short again this season.
Since then, Bright hasn’t lost a 110-meter hurdle race his entire senior season.
“Unfortunately, I was expecting to go to state last year, but I just didn’t have a good race,” Bright said.
He has a lot of confidence for this year’s state. That confidence is the result of seeing the competition before and knowing he can go out and compete with them.
Bright competed in the New Balance Nationals in Boston, Mass., this year with some of the best high school competition in the country. For example Quincy Wilson, who competed and won a gold medal with Team USA in the Olympics, was at the New Balance Nationals.
In Bright’s race at the Delaware County meet earlier this month, he broke a 47-year-old record in the 110-meter hurdles. He ran a PR and a new record county time of 14.27 seconds. This broke the oldest county record, previously held by Perry Dotson of Cowan in 1978.
“It had been a big goal for me after almost breaking it last year, so it felt really good to break such an old record,” Bright said.
He also won the 110 hurdles at the Hoosier Heritage Conference meet last week.
The boys’ track sectional will be Thursday at Muncie Central. The top three finishers in each event move on to the Lawrence Central Regional. From there, the top three finishers (plus anyone who meets the state standard time cutoff) gets to move on to the state meet.
Marcus was the first of the 85 members on the track team to become a captain.
“He was the first captain we named as soon as workouts started and that is a testament to his work ethic as well,” head coach Shane Conley said.
With Bright’s 6-foot-1, 175-pound frame, most would say he looks athletic, or maybe as if he’s made to run the hurdles.
“I think naturally, he’s built to run the hurdles. so his height and flexibility help, but again, I think his work ethic is kind of unmatched,” Conley said
Still, Conley stressed that Bright has earned his success.
“I think if you lined him up with some of the best hurdlers in the state and said, who’s the fastest, he’s probably nowhere near the top,” Conley said. “But because he’s worked at it, he’s worked at his form, he’s worked at his speed, he’s worked at his start in the finish of the race, it’s made him into one of the top hurdlers right now in the state”
Although Marcus has been one of the all-time greatest hurdlers in Delta’s track and field program, and has had multiple colleges reach out about running collegiately, he has decided to attend Ball State University to study business administration. He hopes to grow his popular lawn care business (Marcus Bright Lawn Care).
Marcus also plans to go on more mission trips.
“I think it’s a great way to glorify God and His kingdom,” he said. “I also feel like it’s a way to dive deeper into my faith and for what God’s calling is for my life, and following what Jesus calls us all to do in Mark 16:15: He said to them, ‘Go into the world and preach the gospel to all creation.’”
