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Sports

State Champion Cushing Brought Holt Along for Last Hurrah

Holt's Kenny Cushing was Missouri's 2011 champion in the 1,600-meter run, the second place finisher in the 800-meter run and part of a second-place 4x400-relay team.

There are 10 people in front of you on the last lap of your individual high school career. What do you do?

stuck to the script.

“My race plan was to keep a fair enough distance from the guys up in front and, with the last lap, just give it all I had--and it worked,” said the 2011 Missouri State 1,600-meter run champion and  graduate. Cushing kicked it from 11th place with 400 meters remaining to break the tape at the finish line--the end of a classic deadpan sprint down the stretch, involving five others within two seconds of one other. He took Rockwood Summit’s Daniel Mazar by a mere .01 of a second. “There was really nothing going through my head. It was just a complete blur and a total adrenaline rush,” Cushing said.

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It is not uncommon for any runner to set a goal to win the state title, a duty Cushing took on after finishing sixth place his junior year. But the way he rang the bell before he left Holt, how he brought the program all the way through his final strides, might be the very definition of “going out on top.”

It moves beyond individual accolades. To be accurate, Cushing’s goal was the state title in the 1,600 or the 800--an event he swapped with Mazar as the state runner-up. His individual 18 points, and his part in the second-place 4x400-meter relay team fueled Holt to a best-ever fourth-place trophy at state. This came just a few weekends after the program celebrated its first conference championship.

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“We talked about it since we were sophomores--that we had the potential to be the best track class the school has ever seen,” Cushing said. “It was just awesome getting to help lead and motivate our team to not only a conference championship, but a district championship and also that state metal.”

The recognized Cushing last week, and the school has already set to task polishing his spot on the Wall of Fame. His final two personal records--4:12 and 1:53 in the 1,600 and 800 at the state finals--notched school records for both, adding to his 4x400 team’s record 3:17 from the 2011 sectional meet.

Not bad for a hoops player. Cushing had advanced to the junior varsity basketball squad by his sophomore year, before he tried track that spring--just to keep in shape.

“My sophomore year, I just started running, and I dropped some really good times in the 800. It was the only event I ran,” he said. “I started getting into the 4x400, and I thought ‘maybe I’ll stick with it and see what I can do.’ The next year, coach (Ethan Place) decided to put me in the mile, and that set it all off.”

It’s safe to say basketball has become extracurricular. The race continues at the University of Missouri next year.

“It didn’t settle in until about 100 people came up and talked to me about (being state champion). I was in awe of it for about a week,” Cushing said. “I definitely pushed a lot harder, every single day in every season I had between cross country and winter and even summer track. It was all in the game plan.”

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