Throwback Thursday is a DyeStat feature that allows us to remember and celebrate some of the great meets and performances that have been a part of our DyeStat coverage since John Dye founded the site. Thanks to many stories, photos and videos that have been preserved in our archives, we are able to relive and share with you some of the very best of DyeStat.com.

Sage unleashes a kick and 3,200 for the ages

By Steve Underwood

2000 IL STATE | SAGE/KELLER DUKES OF YORK STORY | 2000 OUTDOOR NATIONALS
| NATIONALS 4X1 MILE VIDEO | SAGE 4X1M INTERVIEW | NATIONALS 2M VIDEO

You may have been family, friends or teammates with Don Sage.  You may have been an ardent supporter or alum of the Long Green Line, Coach Joe Newton’s dynasty at York.  You may have been among the thousands on site that witnessed what happened the last lap of that Illinois Class AA state boys 3,200 meter final in Charleston, May 27, 2000.

Or you may have simply been a fan of prep distance running caught up in the surge of excellence that was happening as the new millennium began.  If you were part of any or all of these groups, chances are you haven’t forgotten the 57-second last lap Sage, the York senior, threw down that day in running his 8:42.89.  Or forgotten the torrid pace that West Chicago senior Tim Keller set in trying to break Sage, even if he would lose 13 seconds on the last lap. 

“Donald finally made his move right in front of the grandstand, just before the bell, where the York fans were congregated,” remembers then-York assistant Charlie Kern, “and it was the most impressive move I have ever seen.  Donald had 3-4 second lead in about 70 meters and ended up winning by 14 seconds ... I have the video and whenever we watch it, kids are either speechless or shout ‘Oh my God!’”

They were speechless or shouting back then, too.  It was one of the defining performances during those heady days, with the hype building both on DyeStat and on the ground in the sport.  Soon, a lot of that would coalesce into what we’d call The Big Three – Webb, Ritz, and Hall – of prep distance running, with Alan Webb of South Lakes, Virginia eventually to set indoor and outdoor prep mile records; Rockford, Michigan’s Dathan Ritzenhein in the midst of collecting two Foot Locker XC titles and four national 2-mile crowns; and Ryan Hall challenging for the headlines from Big Bear Lake, California.

But the cast in this unfolding drama was much bigger than just three guys, and Sage and Keller were a huge part of it, too.  Sage was a super talent and hard worker – “the best runner that I ever had,” Newton has said.  He had fronted an epic state XC meet championship effort the previous fall, then taken second at Foot Locker behind Ritz.  Before his senior spring was done, he would nearly break 4:00 for a mile.  And, while he wouldn’t eventually achieve the Olympian status of that Big Three, Sage went on to win an NCAA 1,500 title while at Stanford.

Keller’s story, meanwhile, was of someone who through his junior year would be called “sub-elite” by most (he was a 4:24/9:15 runner on the track), but had increased his training enough the summer before his senior year to rocket toward the top and eventually finish sixth at Foot Locker Finals.  And who do you think ran the most sub-9:00s of anyone in 2000?  “Tim really came on his senior year,” says Sage now.  “He went from being one of the best runners in state to one of the best runners in the nation in a few months ... I attribute a lot of my best 3,200 meter races to Tim.”

Speculation had been building as to whether Webb could eventually break 4:00 for a mile, and Ritzenhein’s 8:41.10 3,200 in early May in an Ohio invite inspired talk as to whether Jeff Nelson’s 8:36.3 2-mile USR could go down as well.  Sage had the combination of speed and endurance to achieve either feat.  He had already run an 8:45.3 3,200 in a county meet and beaten Keller in a way similar to what he would do at state, as well as a previous 4:07 1,600.

DyeStat wasn’t on hand at the Illinois state meet that year, but was fortunate to get some shots (however blurry) to mark the occasion.  But Sage and Keller were among those who inspired the “Return of the Distance Gods” series on DyeStat, which also began in late May, and was so named in reference to a web page maintained back then by a Patrick Hoffman, who used the “Distance Gods” moniker to describe prep legends of the 1960s and 70s, like Jim Ryun, Steve Prefontaine, Gerry Lindgren, Craig Virgin, and Nelson.  The “Dukes of York” story actually ran later in the series, the week after nationals, but before Sage headed to the Prefontaine Classic.

As for the state meet 3,200, Keller had already been beaten by a last-lap Sage explosion at the aforementioned county meet, but he really didn’t see another workable plan.  “I did what my coach (Paul McCleland) and I talked about,” he says.  “It was really the only way I’d have a chance to win.  Don had about 1:49-50 800 speed and my best was 1:56-57.”  So he went out and did the same thing, hammering an almost unbearable 4:21 pace for the first 1,600.

As for Sage, he says, “Mr. Newton told me not to take the lead until the last 400m.  We were trying to win the team title, and he wanted me to have something left for the 1600 and, if necessary, the 4x400.

“I remember it felt really fast the first 1600. At that point, I was trying not to think about the fact that there was another mile to go. Tim started to tire a little bit after the mile, which gave me time to collect myself.  By the seventh lap, I started feeling a lot better.  I remember thinking that any move needed to be decisive.

“It seemed to me that the closer we got to the finish line, the more likely Tim would get energized by the possibility of winning state.  So when we hit the bell lap, I put my head down and tried to get as big a gap as possible, as quickly as possible.”

He did get a big gap and he did seem to get it as quickly as humanly possible.  The consensus was that Sage’s last lap was 57.  Keller ran north of 70, but still finished with an outstanding 8:56.24.

Interestingly, Newton would eventually look back on that 3,200 and say that telling Sage to hold back until the end was “the worst coaching decision I ever made ... he would have run in the 8:30s and broken the national record and the state record, but I held him back.”

Sage, though, won the 1,600 in 4:07.45, finishing with another amazing last lap – 56 – and York won the meet.  He hardly has regrets about that.  “It went better than we could have even planned,” he says.  “From the 4x800 on, everything seemed to fall into place.  We had a lot of opportunities to watch teammates run really well, and the performances kind of fed off each other.”

And where did those kicks come from?  “Mr. Newton would have us end every workout with a 300 yard sprint,” Sage says.  “As soon as our last interval finished, we made our way to the far side of the track and he lined us up single file at the 300 mark.  He would then let us go, one-by-one, and we’d try to catch the people in front of us before the finish.  This taught us to sprint when tired, which helped so much in those fast 3,200 races.”

As for Keller’s strategy?  “It obviously didn’t work,” he would say in the 2000 story, though he adds now, with a laugh, “It wasn’t as bad as it looked.”

Keller can certainly look at 2000 with a measure of pride.  He would run 9:00 or better seven times indoors and out, including a runner-up finish to Ritz at Nike Indoor that was his first really big track mark (9:00.35y) and sub-9s at both Golden West and Foot Locker Outdoor (then the name for the National Scholastic Athletic Foundation’s outdoor nationals).  “I took it one race at a time,” he says, “and I pretty much went after it every time I lined up.”

After state that year, Sage and Keller moved on to the post-season.  Sage went out to California for the Golden West Invite and hammered three laps of the mile in 3:01 before finishing in 4:04.2.  Then both Illinois stars ventured down to Raleigh for Foot Locker nationals, starting with what shaped up to be an epic 2-mile battle Friday, June 16.  The weekend turned out to be a tough one for Sage.  The deuce, contested on a very warm, humid evening went out in just 4:29.  But Ritz overwhelmed the field in the second half, with a 10-second negative split and finishing in 8:48.06.  Sage was just eighth in 9:05.99, while Keller continued his remarkable string of consistent sub-9s with an 8:58.81 in fourth.

“It was good to beat Don once, even if he had a bad race,” says Keller.

The next morning, York was edged by Ritz’s Rockford squad in the 4x1 Mile.  After the first three legs, York was 5.46 seconds behind, but Sage split 57.70-61.66 the first two laps of the anchor to draw within a second of Ritz.  The start took its toll, though and he wound up with 4:08.57 split and two ticks back.

The Pre Classic a week later went much better for Sage, as he sped a 4:00.29 mile, making him #4 all-time (still #6, 13 years later).  While any runner would love to have gone a third of a second faster and gotten that sub-4:00, Sage could have hardly asked for a better outcome.  The pre-race possibilities ranged from getting caught up in going out way too fast with the elites to winding up in no-man’s land and running by himself.  But the last couple elites in a long string of runners, as the race unfolded, wound up running near-perfect 4:00 pace.

“I went right to the back of the field and hit pretty close to 60s the whole way,” Sage recalls.  “Running with professionals at Hayward Field was a really fun way to end senior year track.”

The two Land of Lincoln stars had mixed results racing after high school.  Keller became a Badger at University of Wisconsin with fellow “Distance God” Matt Tegankamp and, eventually, Chris Solinksky.  “It was great running there, but I had a lot of injuries for two years,” Keller says.  “My fourth year (he redshirted one year) I was fifth in the Big Ten cross country and ran 13:47 5,000 and 29:10 for 10,000 in track, making All-American.

“I also made a lot of friends there and some who I still consider my best friends in life.”  Keller went on to Arizona State for grad school and is now a practicing CPA in the Chicago area.

Sage’s biggest highlight at Stanford was no doubt the 2002 NCAA 1500, where as a sophomore he triumphed, his kick serving him well again.  “My career at Stanford definitely had ups and downs,” he says.  “The first half had more ups that downs, and the last half had more downs than ups.  I’d say from sophomore year on, my racing plateaued.  During my last few years, I tried to force good performances through overtraining and obsessing over minor details.  Running took over my life and became really stressful.”

It’s no longer stressful.  After feeling “discontent” over his career at Stanford, Sage had an internship in the Bay Area and then a full-time job in Southern California.  Then two years after his Stanford career ended, he moved to Eugene to make another go of it with OTC Elite.  The running didn’t work out, but he met his wife there and together they found a church (Ekklesia) that not only became a home for them, but Sage’s employer.

“The move to Eugene didn’t really go as anticipated, but ended up working out better than I could have planned!” he says.  “After a two-year stint in grad school, I’m back in Eugene working as the Admin Pastor of Ekklesia.  Basically, I manage the administrative and operational side of our church.”

He also has a better perspective on his college running career.  “I can appreciate how fortunate I was to have some really great experiences as an individual and part of a team.  If my best individual performance happened to be sophomore year, I’m good with it! I was super blessed to be able to compete for Stanford.”

No matter how well he ran as a Cardinal, though, his career at York and running for Coach Newton would have been hard to top.  “What’s cool about our senior year is that we had a core group of four of us (Peter Cioni, John Janulis, Adam Palumbo and I) that had trained hard together for four years.  Not only that, but JJ, Peter and I actually were the core of our junior high team.  To experience going from junior high runners, through all the trials of seven years of competition, and culminating with a state championship our senior year was really rewarding.”

“Mr. Newton made everything that happened possible.  He not only taught us the value of working hard, he also made it fun.  I really have fond memories of competing under Mr. Newton.  He made high school running an amazing experience, while teaching life lessons that still help me today.”