A diamond in the rough
Stadlman enters state championships as 400 favorite after taking up track as a junior
Whether you call it an axiom or a saying, there is one pertaining to track and field that states the following: No one chooses the 400 meters. The 400 chooses you.
Jack Stadlman of Temecula Valley High School in Temecula, California, can relate to that. For the senior sprinter who recently signed with USC had no intention of running the 400 when he turned his athletic focus to track in October of 2023. He was going to run the 100 and 200. As he says, running the 400 “was definitely a no way kind of thing.”
The 400 was too long, too hard, and it hurt way too much, particularly in the minutes after finishing the race. In addition, the training it required was too demanding.
And yet, Stadlman will be favored to win the grueling one-lap sprint when the 105th edition of the CIF (California Interscholastic Federation) State Track & Field Championships start later today at Veterans Memorial Stadium in Clovis.
Stadlman has run in only eight 400-meter races during his career and only three of them have been what he would call “all-out efforts.” Yet he has the three fastest times in the state this year and his top mark of 45.69 seconds is substantially faster than the 46.32 best of No. 2-ranked Jaelen Hunter, a freshman from Servite High, an all-boys catholic school in Anaheim.
While it has been nearly three months since Stadlman shocked the prep track and field world with his 45.69 clocking in the Saddle-Up Invitational at Vista Murrieta High in Murrieta in March 1, Temecula Valley sprint coach Desmond Lee says that his charge is in better shape now than he was then.
“In the worse-case scenario, he’s going to run in the 45s,” Lee said when asked about his outlook for Stadlman in the state meet. “But in the best-case scenario, he, honestly, could break 45.”
Only four boys have ever run under 45 seconds in the 400 in the history of prep sprinting in the U.S. But before you attribute Lee’s statement to a coach getting overzealous about one of his athletes, it helps to know that the 65-year-old Lee has been coaching for 38 years. And during that time, he has encountered few sprinters who possessed Stadlman’s combination of speed and endurance, as well as his high-octane motor.
Stadlman’s assets become even more uncommon when you consider that he did not turn his attention to track until early in his junior year.
He had played baseball, soccer, and flag football at an organized level at various times while growing up. He also enjoyed playing pick-up basketball and was a member of Temecula Valley’s freshman team when he was in the ninth grade and he was on the junior varsity squad as a sophomore.
According to Stadlman, his playing time had increased from his freshman to his sophomore season, but he wasn’t sure if he was going to make the varsity team as a junior. And even if he was selected to the varsity squad, he wasn’t sure how much playing time he would get.
However, he regarded himself as “pretty fast,” and he wanted to continue playing a sport in high school “no matter what.”
And as he puts it, “I just thought I would have more opportunities to further my abilities in track.”
It turned out to be a wise move. He ran 10.73 seconds in the 100 and 21.62 in the 200 in his first season, as well as a promising 49.06 in his only 400 and a 48.2 opening leg in a 4 x 400 relay.
He advanced to the Division 1 final of the 200 in the Southern Section Divisional Finals, but he was bitterly disappointed when he finished eighth in that race in a wind-aided 21.78.
“That race hurt him, you know,” Lee said. “He was in tears afterward, and I told him, ‘Hey, what you’re feeling, this is all new to you. I want you to take this feeling, and the hurt inside of you, and know that we’re never going to come back here. We’re going to use it as fuel for next year.’ ”
After taking most of the summer off, Stadlman and his teammates began training again in August.
Lee incorporates hill running into his fall regimen for sprinters and his charges frequently take part in workouts in which they run repeats up 500- or 200-meter hills in an effort to increase their endurance strength.
Yet Lee remembers Stadlman saying several times that his training was designed to “try to trick him into running a 400.”
Although that was not the case, at least not directly, Lee was eager to see how Standlman would do when he ran in a San Diego State University all-comers meet in early December in which he was entered in the 150 and the 300, as well as in the 4 x 200 relay.
His performances were notable as he finished second in the 150 in 16.05 seconds, won the 300 in 33.42, and ran the anchor leg on a team that won the 4 x 200 in 1:28.13.
While he finished more than six tenths of a second behind the first-place finisher in the 150, the winning time of 15.41 was turned in by junior — and defending state 100 and 200 champion — Brandon Arrington of Mt. Miguel High in nearby Spring Valley.
Arrington defeated Stadlman by a slightly larger margin when he ran 15.26 to Stadlman’s 15.97 in winning the 150 in the California Winter Track & Field Championships at Arcadia High in early February. But Stadlman won the 300 in 33.00 while edging Long Beach Poly junior Noah Smith and Servite freshman Hunter, who were each credited with times of 33.06.
“Jack overthought that race and went out too hard,” Lee said. “Instead of just executing, he went out too fast. And then it became a fight for his life as he came home with the lactic acid kicking in, and he ended up running 33 flat on the nose.”
Based on what he had seen in practice, and before the all-comers meet in San Diego, Lee had sent out an email to numerous college coaches informing them that he was coaching a kid at Temecula Valley who was a diamond in the rough, and someone worth keeping an eye on because he was “a hard worker, a track and field newbie, and someone who did not have a lot of miles on his legs.”
Lee said that only two programs, USC and LSU, responded to his initial email. But his phone started ringing a lot after Stadlman dropped his personal best from 49.06 to 45.69 while winning the Saddle-Up Invitational on March 1.
That clocking moved him to sixth on the all-time Southern Section performer list, puts him fifth on the yearly U.S. national prep list, and crushed the meet record of 48.30 that 2022 World 400 champion Michael Norman had set in 2014 during his sophomore season at Vista Murrieta.
While Lee figured Stadlman was capable of running in the mid-46 to low 47-second range entering that race, he said “his adrenaline kicked in” and that helped him run even faster.
“I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’, ” Lee said. “He basically shocked everyone. [Murrieta Vista] Coach [Coley] Candaele, who had Michael Norman. They all started freaking out. The announcer, he almost cursed before he caught himself. Everybody was like, ‘Michael Norman’s record just went down.’ ”
Stadlman was feeling quite confident before the race because he had run what he calls a broken 400 in a recent workout in which he ran a 200 in the low 22-second range, rested for 10 seconds, and then ran another 200 in the high 23-second range. The combined 200s added up to a time of 46.0.
Therefore, he was “really confident that I was going to run at least a 46. I had a lot of numbers going through my head.”
The shockingly fast time prompted Lee to ask himself if he had pushed Stadlman too fast and too soon in training?
But then he “caught my breath, and said, ‘No. I didn’t.’ I’m doing the things that I’ve always done. You make slight little adjustments for certain athletes, but I had not done anything unusual for Jack. But the entire world was pretty much thinking I had peaked him too soon.”
In an effort to have Stadlman in peak condition for the state meet, Lee was careful not to have him chase quick times in every 400 race he ran.
While he did run 45.92 to win the 400 in the Acadia Invitational on April 12 and 46.27 to win the Division 1 race of the Southern Section divisional meet at Moorpark High on May 17, he cruised to a second-place time of 47.91 in the Southern Section Masters at Moorpark last Saturday and also posted times of 49.40, 48.26, and 47.97 during the season.
In addition, he lowered his personal best in the 100 to 10.54 and in the 200 to 21.03, and placed second in the latter event in the Southern Section Division 1 final.
Although he knows the 400 is his bread-and-butter race, he enjoys running the 200 and has advanced to the state championships in that event as well.
He is scheduled to run in the second of four qualifying heats in the 400 at approximately 7:15 p.m., Pacific Daylight Time, tonight, and he will race in the first of four heats in the 200 at 9:20.
If things go well and he advances to the final of each event, he will run in the 400 at 6:45 p.m. on Saturday, followed by the 200 at 8:15.
While he is confident about his chances of winning the 400 and running well in the 200, he realizes that this will be the first meet of his life in which he will be required to run in qualifying heats on Friday, followed by finals on Saturday.
A weather forecast calling for high temperatures of 98 degrees Fahrenheit (37 Celsius) today and 103 (39) tomorrow will present him with another challenge.
“There’s a lot of great competition at this point,” Stadlman said. “So I think no matter what I run, if I can win the state title, it’s going to feel amazing. Obviously, I have my time goals, to run 45 low or 44 high, hopefully. But if I do become a state champion, I’m going to be hyped.”