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Published: Wednesday, Apr. 06, 2011 / Updated: Tuesday, Jan. 03, 2012 11:48 AM

Life in the fast lane too much for Pilot reporter

LAKE WYLIE -- 

Beneath the championship banners, along a concrete cavalcade of maroon and gold eagle emblems outlying the Oakridge Middle School gym, hangs a record board you’ll need help reading.

The name Sapphire Hughes shows up three times. She’s the fastest girl ever to walk the Oakridge halls, the reigning school champ over 100 meters (12.65) and 200 (26.60). She also anchored the record 4x100 relay team (53.41).

“You better get in shape,” cautions Teresa England, girls track coach who set me up to race Hughes. “She’s already broken that record.”

Even the record board can’t keep up with Hughes, 14, who this year shaved a half second or more off already unprecedented times. Principal Will Largen notes another problem. I’m only reading half the board.

“She’s the fastest – boy or girl,” Largen said.

Sure enough, even her seventh-grade marks sit more than three tenths below the boys’ bests in the same events. Ordinarily soft-spoken, the eighth-grader isn’t shy answering that stereotype.

“When you compare times,” Hughes said of boys being faster than girls, “it’s not really true.”

For the former hurdler, age isn’t a roadblock, either. She first raced runners her current age when she was 9 years old. Winner of the unofficial York County’s Fastest Girl title at the county middle school meet as a seventh-grader, Hughes now races – and wins – on the Clover High School team.

In her first two meets against athletes who can drive, date, vote or join the armed forces, Hughes didn’t finish outside the top three in the 100. In her first 200, nobody beat her.

“I kind of just wanted to step out of middle school and prepare myself for next year,” Hughes said of running high school track. “Now I know what I’m looking at.”

What I’m looking at is England from 100 meters. I should’ve known better when she tells me I won’t be able to hear the whistle at that distance. A pesky combination of nagging injury and weather that would keep the Welsh national team indoors means I won’t actually race Hughes. I’ll chase her time. Seventh-grade sprinters Shawn Rivera and MacKenzie Summers agree to race alongside because, at Oakridge, everybody chases Hughes.

England drops her hand, and the sprint begins. The target time is 12.07 seconds. How fast are we talking?

Had Hughes run her 100-meter personal best in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, she would’ve tied Nirinaharifidy Ramilijaona of Madagascar for 55th out of 85 runners.

That’s faster than any female from nearly 30 competing countries. I’m looking at you, Micronesia.

Still not impressed? Consider that the best recorded Sapphire Hughes 100-meter time would’ve been a world record until 1928. Her since-broken, seventh-grade time in the 200 would’ve been a world mark until 1924.

Two full decades after the Wright brothers pondered launching themselves into the atmosphere as a sensible endeavor, and humanity still hadn’t produced a woman as verifiably fast as Hughes.

She suggests I focus on my start. At 10 meters we’re past the point of inadvertent form tackles, my main concern coming off the blocks. We’re all fairly close, but I’m not exactly lighting the track afire. I’m a decade past my sprinting prime and wasn’t particularly fast then. Just getting out of bed in the morning I’m creaking and crackling like a runaway forklift at an oyster cracker plant.

Hughes is confident, and should be. Lightning in a bottle tries to catch her. The girl moves faster than a one-man handbell choir. She’s what England calls a special mix of “God-given talent, and she enjoys it.”

Enjoyment isn’t what I’m feeling halfway through. You know that sound your engine makes when you haven’t changed the oil in, say, a presidential administration or two? That’s my lower body at 50 meters. Rivera is gone. I mean, dial-one-for-long-distance gone. Tape an eye chart to his back, and I’m failing it. Summers is close, but I have no idea where.

I’m guessing Hughes would be getting water by now. She could fit her life story in the time difference between her finish and mine. She’s the middle sister between sophomore teammate Ashia and Nautica, 10. Hughes ran AAU track as a Deltona Strider in Florida, but moved to Lake Wylie four years ago to be near her grandfather. He’s the one who showed her high school meet times in the newspaper last season, proving she could compete.

In a rattling of freshman, sophomore, junior and senior on the 36-girl Clover High track roster, Hughes is the only runner with a number code. She’s simply, “2015.”

And the girl seldom sits still. When she does watch television it’s likely track and field, where Hughes idolizes Jamaican sprinters she hopes to outrun at the Olympics someday. She’s got a far more realistic shot at catching them than I do her.

At 75 meters I’m looking to interrogate the scoundrel who measured off this national park of a course at only 100 meters. Run me downhill through an elevator shaft and I’m still not beating Rivera, who pulls in about a second off the Hughes time. I catch a glimpse of Summers. We hit the line in a photo finish – at 15.01.

For most people, three seconds is about the time it takes to execute a proper sneeze. In track, it’s a lifetime. If I could breathe at this point, I’d swear I’m just not cut out for this kind of competition. That Hughes must be some kind of genetic wunderkind, that it’s almost unfair where she starts compared to the rest of us.

Hughes almost admits as much. But there’s more. There has to be more than speed by birthright, she says. Otherwise she may as well be running in circles.

“It’s all about the effort,” Hughes said. “You can be born to be fastest, but you can be faster.”

Bad news for high school sprinters the next four years, but good news for the Oakridge record board. It’s likely to be keeping up with Hughes for a long, long time.

Competition: Sapphire Hughes, Lake Wylie, eighth-grade sprint champion

Contest: A 100-meter race at Oakridge Middle School against her best time in the event, 12.07 seconds.

Score: It’s always hard to score events where lower numbers are better. I lost by three seconds. I’ll give Hughes 12.07. I get nothing. Final score: Hughes 12.07, Marks 0.

Overall Record: Pilot talent 24.07, Marks 2

On Your Marks is a monthly column where Lake Wylie Pilot reporter John Marks takes on competition from the greater Lake Wylie area, challenging them in their field of expertise and profiling what makes them special. Check out past On Your Marks columns at lakewyliepilot.com. For ideas on who you think Marks should challenge next, e-mail jmarks@lakewyliepilot.com.