Scott Swanson
Of The New Era
Sweet Home’s Casey Tow is following in the footsteps of his coach, Dakotah Keys, winning the decathlon at the USATF Region 13 Junior Olympic Track and Field Championships July 4-5 at Mt. Tahoma High School in Tacoma, Wash.
Tow, a senior-to-be, scored 6278 points in the third competition of his career, more than 1,000 points over his first outing, during spring break at Summit High School, where he scored 5252. He qualified for the regionals at the state competition in Newberg in late June, scoring 5618 to finish second behind Arthur Katahdin of Milwaukie.
The decathlon is a 10-event competition incorporating sprints (100 and 400), 110 hurdles, distance (1500 meters), jumps (long jump, high jump and pole vault), and throws (shot, discus and javelin). Region 13 is composed of Oregon, Washington, Alaska and northern Idaho.
Tow posted nine personal bests over the two-day event – the 400, which was one of his specialities during the high school season, being the only one in which he didn’t have a PR.
On Day 1, he ran the 100 in 11.84 (a .05 PR), long jumped 19-7½ (6 inches), threw the shot 40-0 (7-feet), high jumped 5-10¾ (3 inches) and ran the 400 in 41.57.
Day 2 was big for Tow from the first event, the hurdles, in which he started with a big personal best of 16.29 (.45) in the hurdles. Next up, he set a 10-foot PR in the discus at 124-2¼, then bettered his pole vault best by two feet by clearing 11-0. He followed that with a 10-foot PR in the javelin with a throw of 156-2 before winning the 1500 in 4:36.81, 25 seconds ahead of his nearest competitor.
He said he had hoped to run 4.33 in the 1500, which would have gotten him to 6300 points, but just fell short.
“I had a pretty good meet,” he said. “I exceeded my expectations.”
He said he’d specifically hoped to break 40 feet in the shot and his high hurdles time gave him “a good start for Day 2.”
“I was really happy with the hurdles. I hadn’t run that good of a hurdles race in a long time. And I was really excited over my pole vault PR.”
Tow’s score puts him second on Sweet Home High School’s all-time list, behind Keys, who scored 7204 in 2008 as a high school junior at the national Junior Olympics meet. Keys went on to lead the Sweet Home boys to three straight state track championships and was a three-time All-American in the decathlon at the University of Oregon. He returned to coach track at Sweet Home in 2016.
Tow posted personal bests in nine of the 10 events, though he didn’t compete in many of the decathlon events during the high school season.
“That was a really good score,” said Keys, who added he thought Tow could break the 6000-point barrier this summer.
“He’s put in so much work. We’ve trained pretty much five days a week and he’s done a lot of stuff on his own, watching videos on the Internet to learn technique.”
Tow said having Keys as a coach has been “really nice.”
“He has a lot of knowledge and experience.”
Tow’s finish qualifies him for the national championships July 22-23 in Sacramento, Calif. The Pacific Northwest will have four qualifiers, two of whom exceeded the automatic qualifying score.
Tow said he’d like to score 6500 next time.
“The regional meet was big for me. I think I have a lot more to go in the long jump and I can cut down my hurdles time.”
Keys noted that the regionals finish puts Tow at No. 13 in the nation in all high school divisions.
“The kid is dedicated. He’s excited. You can see he’s one of the top guys returning next year.”
Billy Snow, who was one of Keys’ high school coaches, said Tow’s rapid improvement shows potential in the sport.
“You increase 600 points – that happens rarely in the decathlon,” he said.