It wasn’t hard to track down the best

This may be a first in the history of the selection of the Idaho Spokesman-Review Male and Female Athletes of the Year: The top athletes led their respective teams to state championships in track.

Not state titles in football, basketball or volleyball mind you. But track.

Caleb Cazier of Timberlake and Breanna Sande of Lake City have been named the region’s athletes of the year

Cazier led the Timberlake boys to the school’s first state championship. Sande won three individual state titles and teamed on a winning relay as Lake City’s girls captured a second straight state championship.

For Timberlake, the chase for a state championship couldn’t have been more dramatic. Stirring the straw of the down-to-the-last event intrigue was Cazier, a senior.

Cazier, who nursed a hamstring injury the last half of the season, aggravated it in his first event, the 100 meters. In a race that Cazier places in the top three easily on a healthy leg, he had to limp across the finish line in last while seemingly dragging his left leg.

About an hour later, though, Cazier managed to find the guts to overcome the throbbing pain and defended his state title in the 400 with a come-from-behind victory that had his coach, Brian Kluss, in tears.

“That was the gutsiest race I’ve ever seen anyone do,” Kluss said, choking back tears moments after the race. “I can’t believe I just watched that.”

Then another hour later, Cazier jogged the 200 to finish last for what was at the time a valuable team point.

He topped it all off when he took the baton on the anchor leg of the final race, the 1,600 relay, with his team trailing first-place Snake River by a half point. In third place when he started the final 400 lap, Cazier mustered just enough speed and intestinal fortitude to pull off a gold-medal finish.

Had it been any other meet other than state, Cazier wouldn’t have run. That’s how much pain he was in after aggravating the injury in the first race.

So how did he manage to overcome the pain and run? To Cazier, the answer was as simple. He did it for his team.

“I don’t think it was a superhuman effort,” Cazier said. “It was doable because there were people counting on me. It was more of a mental challenge than anything – to look past the pain.”

The team title was more important to him than his individual victory because he knows how special it was to hang the first state-title banner in the school’s gym.

For no matter how many more state-title banners are won at Timberlake, nothing can eclipse the satisfaction of putting the first one up in the gym.

“My leg felt like it was going to explode after the (1,600 relay),” said Cazier, who will attend Boise State University and run track. “On the bus ride home I had to prop it up (straight) to keep it from cramping. If we’d had a meet the following week I would not have been able to run.”

Cazier will miss many things about high school. Perhaps what he’ll miss the most is seeing his coach every day.

“I can’t say enough about how much he’s done for me,” Cazier said. “I couldn’t imagine being coached by anyone else. He’s more than a teacher and a coach. He’s a friend to me.”

Kluss could coach another 20 years and probably not come across a student/athlete as special as Cazier.

Sande, a junior, challenged for state titles in everything she did this year. In addition to winning state titles in the three long-distance races, she finished second in state cross country and was a starting guard on a basketball team that finished third at state.

She hopes to challenge for state championships in all three of her sports again next year.

There was no athlete more valuable at the state track meet for LC than Sande.

“She could not have performed any better,” LC coach Kelly Reed said. “When she needed to put the throttle down, she did. She not only won three (gold medals), she blew away the field and left no doubt who the best distance runner is in the state.”

Sande will likely finish her high school career with the record for saying the fewest words of any athlete in state history, too. Painfully introverted while finishing second as a freshman and winning state as a sophomore in cross country, Sande’s personality blossomed this year.

She credits Reed and cross country and track assistant coaches Justin and Heather Taylor for helping her confidence grow.

“They’ve pushed me in practices and made me get better,” Sande said.

She hopes to earn a scholarship so she can run track in college.

Ask her why she enjoys running and she admits she can’t explain why.

“I’ve always thought about that and I don’t know why I like running,” she said.

It doesn’t matter. Not when one is as talented as Sande.