Senior sprinter running past all competition
Shhh!
Don’t tell Jimmy Rehfeld, but he is the fastest 100-meter runner in Districts I, II or III in Class 2B. He is the second fastest in the 200, just a tenth of a second behind the leader. And he is in the top 10 in both events in the entire state regardless of classification.
But Rehfeld doesn’t want to know any of that. He doesn’t look at the rankings. He doesn’t care. All he does is run.
And run faster than any one else in the process.
“I try not to think about it,” Rehfeld said. “Every once in a while a coach will tell me so and so, or we are the No. 1 whatever, or you have the third fastest whatever.”
Rehfeld, The Bear Creek School senior who shined on the basketball team that finished fifth in Class 2B last year, has been taking his second SeaTac season by storm. He has won all three 100 or 200 SeaTac league meet sprints in just his second year competing. Last year he hit the ground running, making state in the 400 but didn’t place.
Now in his senior year, Rehfeld is trying to end his high school career with a bang by improving on that. He also was part of the 100-meter relay team that competed in the prelims at state, but looks improved this year, ranked No. 2 in the district and No. 6 in the state. The 400 relay has been even more impressive, ranked No. 1 in the district and No. 4 in the state.
“There is a part of it (at a race) that is cool, ‘Oh I’m the fastest guy standing here,’ and that’s really cool,” Rehfeld said. “But it’s also how much faster can I get, because when I joined track I wasn’t really thinking about doing anything crazy with it. I didn’t know I could come out here and do what I did.”
This year, he has improved on his 200 time by more than a second from 24.94 seconds to 23.84 seconds between the first and second SeaTac league meets.
Most impressively, his 100 time of 11.74 is almost a half second ahead of the second place runner in the three districts.
Rehfeld said he wants to compete in both relays and both sprints at state, something he thinks is doable. Rehfeld has plenty of experience on the state stage thanks to being a vital member of the best Bear Creek boys basketball team in school history. The Grizzlies went undefeated in the regular season and went 3-1 at state to end up fifth-place.
“At first we were like ‘Oh, we got fifth. There were still four more places that we could have got,’” Rehfeld said. “I was thinking about that, and then I realized ‘Whoa! There were only four teams in the state in our division who were better than us’ and the more I thought about it, this was a pretty sweet way to end senior year. Fifth in state is something to be proud of.”
Rehfeld said track is a nice compliment to basketball, but couldn’t pick one over the other.
“It’s a lot more relaxed,” Rehfeld said of track. “I definitely enjoyed the intensity of basketball, but track you can come out here, you can relax, especially for sprinting it’s a lot easier to put less in sometimes because you can’t just go all out on practice days because if you do that’s not the right training regiment you need to be doing. So it’s kind of interesting to have an aspect of training that is less based on all out effort and more based on thinking everything through.”
Rehfeld said it has dawned on him that his high school career is coming to a close, and said he is looking forward to going to Westmont College in California next year.
“There’s a part of me that is sad that I won’t be running at Bear Creek anymore,” said Rehfeld, who has not decided if he is going to run track at college. “But I don’t see this as me not playing basketball or me not running. I will still play intramural. I don’t see me not running the 100 or the 200 as a huge thing. If I was to completely stop athletics, that would bother me more.
“I’ll be running on a beach instead of running on turf.”
