Sweet Home’s Elijah Rodriguez became the first eighth-grader to compete in a decathlon in nearly 20 years at the Combined Events Festival hosted by Churchill High School June 14-15.
Rodriguez finished with a total score of 2793 in the 10-event, two-day competition. Decathlons include disciplines representing all facets of track and field – 100-meter dash, 110-meter high hurdles, 400 meters, 1500 meters, shot, discus and javelin, long jump, high jump and pole vault.
Athletes accumulate points designated by pre-established scoring tables, based on their performances in each event, with the highest total score determining the winner.
Rodriguez, 15, for whom most of those events were relatively new, was the youngest competitor at Churchill. He had approximately two weeks to learn the basics of all of the field events with the exception of the javelin, in which he competed during the junior high season.
The only event in which he didn’t score was the high jump.
Rodriguez ran the 100 in 13.14 (444 points), and the 400 in 1:03.50 (302), threw the shot 24-1¾ (328), and long jumped 16-0¼ (360) on Day 1.
On Day 2 he opened with the 110 Hurdles (39 inches) in 22.94 (154), threw the discus (1.6 kg) 59-9 (239), cleared 6-7½ in the pole vault (143), threw the javelin 94-0 (281) and ran the 1500 in 5:03.10 (542).
Dakota Keyes was the last Sweet Home eighth-grader to compete in a decathlon, finishing the Sweet Home-hosted decathlon in 2006 with 4549 points. Keys went on to win multiple state championships and competed for the University of Oregon, where he was twice third in the decathlon at the NCAA Championships.
Billy Snow, who coached Keys in high school and directed the spring-break decathlon competition that Sweet Home hosted for many years, said he cannot recall any other eighth-graders attempting the decathlon.
“It’s been pretty rare,” he said. “Dakota is the only one I remember.”