The Notre Dame men’s track & field team cleaned up at the Big East Championships last weekend, running away from the field (pun intended) to win the conference title with 153 points, earning over 50 more than second place South Florida (100 points).
Among the many Notre Dame stars last weekend were the football team’s own twins George Atkinson III and Josh Atkinson. After George posted the second best 100 meter dash time in the prelims (10.36 seconds), Josh stepped up in the finals to edge out his brother for 4th place overall with a time of 10.39 seconds–tenths of a second faster than GAIII, who was 5th. You can see the race: here (Josh in lane 1 [far right], George in lane 4)
Brian Hardin kindly pointed out that GAIII’s preliminary time was the 4th fastest 100 meter time by a college football player this year and the best time of any freshman college football player. Josh Atkinson’s preliminary time in the 200 meter dash of 21.20 seconds was the third best by any college football this year. Hardin also Tweeted yesterday that GAIII and Josh’s times were 2nd and 3rd among ND football players behind the one-and-only Rocket Ismail, who ran a 10.34 in 1991 (if anyone knows what kind of timing system the NCAA was using 21 years ago, I’d love to hear it – any chance that time was affected by a stopwatch?).
Josh Atkinson is faster than every wide receiver he’ll cover this year.
So what do we know? These guys are freakin’ quick. We also know that nobody is going to ever again argue that John Goodman has the fastest straight line speed on the team. We saw flashes of George’s brilliance with kickoff returns against MSU and USC, and saw what he could do in space at this year’s Blue/Gold game (now let’s just get him to hold on to the damn ball). Josh Atkinson and Lo Wood are still battling for the second cornerback position, but we shouldn’t expect to see Josh get beat deep too frequently which is comforting for those of us still recovering from “4th and 9.”
For a little context, Florida’s Jeff Demps once ran a 10.01 (tied for the world junior record), but he also gave up a chance at the NFL to pursue the Olympic trials, weighs about 35 pounds less than GAIII, and can’t break tackles. For more detail about how the Atkinson bros stack up historically, check out this excellent peice by Keith Arnold at Inside the Irish.
It would be a disservice to not mention some of the other Irish standouts from the weekend:
– Freshman Chris Giesting was named the conference’s Most Outstanding Track Performer, winning both the 200m (sorry Josh) and 400m titles. Giesting broke the ND record in the 400m with a 46.03. That is 0.03 seconds off a provisional qualifying time for the Olympic Trials, folks. – Jeremy Rae won the 1,500m – Logan Renwick won the triple jump (WR recruit Chris Brown’s South Carolina state championship jump would have put him 5th in the Big East) – Andrew Hills won the hammer throw – Kevin Schipper took home the pole vault crown – The relay team of Rae, Randall Babb, Jack Favorite, and Johnathan Shawel took first in the 4x800m relay. – The women’s team took home 2nd place at the championships, led by Rebecca Tracy (1,500m) and the 4x100m relay team (Kaila Barber, Jade Barber, Michelle Brown, Aijah Urssery).Now, let’s just get bench press machine Ben Turk competing in shot put next year.
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After growing up as a Notre Dame hating, misguided youth, it only took one visit to campus during high school for Twibby to realize the error of his ways. From that point on Twibby and the Irish have had what can only be described as a true Hollywood love story. When he's not reminiscing about his time in South Bend and pondering ways to get a 5th year of eligibility as a student, Twibby writes about Notre Dame and the rest of the college football world for HLS. Along with the Irish, he is a diehard fan of the Chicago Bears, Bulls, Blackhawks and Cubs with a strange affection for Northwestern Wildcats football.
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I have never heard claim that Goodman is the fastest guy on the team, just the fastest of the receivers. He ran best 40 time of the receivers during winter training.
I don’t think they have used stop watches, at least at championship events, since some time in the late ’80’s. Even my high school had an electronic timing system, albeit an early generation one, and that was when Gerry Ford was President.
I actually competed in at least one of the races when Rocket ran a 10.3 (I believe he did this more than once). All of the sprints when I was in school (’90-’94) were fully automated unless there was a technical glitch. Funny how 21 years does not feel like such a long time…
CKC – that is awesome that you ran with Rocket. I assume you were close behind in the 10.4 range?
I wasn’t thinking as much that the technology wasn’t readily available 21 years ago, I was more curious if ND/other college programs were willing to pay for it. Was it expensive?
Twibby – I wish I was that fast. I was a 10.6 guy and was more competitive in the 200/400. But I did get to run on a couple cool 4×100 relays with Rocket and Dean Lytle. Dean was a FREAK. He ran about a 10.5 and I have to guess he was close to 250 lbs.
Wish I had video of those 4×100’s to show my kids. I actually anchored a couple times. Not because I was fastest, but because the football players rarely practiced – and Coach Millar did not want the exchange screwed up on the last leg. The thinking was that if they made it around the first 300 without dropping the baton, we would likely be winning and I was just fast enough not to screw it up.
I have no idea what the cost of the FAT system was back then, but it was used when I was in HS in the 90’s as well, granted not quite as often. And that was in public school in upstate NY… so it could not have cost THAT much.
Scratch HS in the 90’s. I meant 80’s. I graduated HS in ’90.
I have heard that Bennett Jackson is actually the fastest on the defense, but again that may just be from the 40 testing during the winter.
Either way, those Atkinson boys are ridiculously fast. Especially when you take into consideration that GA3 is 6’1″, 215 lbs.
I’m a track guy and can add a bit of context. Yes, the boys are damn fast! The conversion between hand timed and electronic timing is .24, so the boys are down around 10.1 under the old system which many of us can remember. Lots of guys who seem fast actually only run 10.5-10.6 in competition, and in a race a guy running 10.3 seems quite a bit ahead of a guy running 10.6.
So much like the Rocket, GA III will only need a bit of a seam to break away, and Josh should be able to close on someone who has seemingly beat him with a good cut.
All in all these are very positive signs.
IF Josh can crack the starting lineup, good stuff. Lo Wood may have him beat out. But regardless, great to have this kind of athleticism. Josh will be solid on STs for sure, and at least will get some time out there at CB assuming he can learn the position well enough.
Lots of speed/athleticism on this team – it’s just that it’s young talent w/o much experience in many cases.
This begs the question. Why did Darby decommit from ND? Is Florida or whereever he went, that much better?
“best time of any freshman college football player”
So wait, where did Darby finish? Are you saying that we didn’t lose the fastest player in last year’s freshman class? Awesome news!
Okay, now can we start playing real football?
Never mind. I’m an idiot. Wrong class.
Darby’s 100m times haven’t matched up as well with the Atkinsons (best of 10.55). His best 200 time so far was 21.17, so just slightly better than Josh.
Source: http://www.athletic.net/trackandfield/Athlete.aspx?AID=746411
Speed is always great but technique wins with some speed everything , oh yea experience is always good. So I rather go with Lo.