Picture this: you’re under blinding lights in the middle of a high school football field. The stands are packed with fans, yelling and cheering. You see the hurdles ahead of you, spanning a total of 110 meters. Past those hurdles, you see ywour teammate, waiting for you to hand the baton to you. You feel the adrenaline pumping through your veins as you wait for the gun to go off and as soon as you hear the fire of the gun, all you focus on are the hurdles in front of you.

Jack Sebald ’24, Darius Alberty ’25, Cree Thomas ’25 and Will De Spong ’25 experienced this event, the 4×110 Shuttle Hurdle Relay, on the biggest stage: the Arcadia Invitation national meet. Not only did they compete in this event, but they won it. “Winning it all [is just a] really good feeling, just knowing we’re the best hurdle team in the nation,” said Sebald.

Even with a historic year for the hurdling group, it brings about a rare, tough decision for Head Coach Mr. Bill Kalkman: only four runners can race in any given race at the Division 1 and Open state meets. Kalkman has to choose between De Spong, Sebald, Alberty, Thomas, Nero Nuez ’25 and Brendon Luke ’26 for four spots in the 110 and 300-meter high hurdle races.

Nuez accredits this rare predicament to the coaching, saying, “It’s definitely a big part due to our coaches. We have world class coaches that used to train for hurdles, so we have that going for us.”

Aside from Kalkman, Brophy has former professional hurdlers Jarret Eaton and Max Hairston helping lead the program. Eaton was the 2016 and 2018 American champion in the 60 meter hurdles, whereas Hairston finished 6th at the 2017 U.S. championships in the 110-meter hurdles.

Meanwhile, De Spong attributes this level of success across the team to “start[ing] off in the offseason training really hard and … everyone open[ing] up really good.” Sebald agrees, but more on the basis of “hav[ing] a really good team chemistry and having the five or six of us be together makes our times a lot better.”

Both Sebald and De Spong suffered injuries that kept the from competing after the first two weeks of the 2023 season. Now, with the squad at full strength, the aspects of chemistry and competition are even more important.

Since there is only 4-5 spots open per meet with 6 great hurdlers, “there’s always going to be that one person that might be left out,” said Alberty, “So we always push each other [to] help us better as a team [and] to continue to PR.”

Their success as a group has shown results already, as their win at the Arcadia Invitational already proved themselves as one of the top hurdling teams in the country. At the time of this article’s release, De Spong and Sebald are ranked second and fourth respectively in the 110 meter hurdles in Arizona, setting them up to perform well at the Division 1 and Open state championships.

But this success in the hurdling events for Brophy is not just limited to this season. Numerous great hurdlers, such as Devon Allen ’13, Robert Grant ’14 and Isaiah Oliver ’15 all set Arizona high school state records and won state championships for Brophy, with Allen even competing in the 2016 and 2020 Olympics. When asked about whether there is any pressure for hurdlers to live up to Allen’s legacy at Brophy, Kalkman said, “I would call it a positive vibe. I don’t call it pressure, but there’s an expectation.”

Those expectations have already been shattered in a year that has been historic for Arizona hurdling. Grant’s 300-meter hurdles record was just broken by Gilbert’s Vance Nilsson, a time that now ranks as #1 in the country. The 110-meter hurdles record is also under threat, as Nilsson ran a time of 13.54, also at the Arcadia Invitational, to rival the 13.50 state record set by Allen in 2013.

Grant talked with the Arizona Republic about his record being broken and how the state of Arizona hurdling has progressed since his time at Brophy.

“Records are made to be broken and I’ve been really fortunate to own the state record for the last 10 years. Whenever a record is broken it’s a good thing for AZ track and field and a good thing for our sport,” said Grant.

This type of success is sure to go on for a while, with only one of the top six hurdlers being a senior, and two very impressive sophomores, Luke and Lionel Franklin ’26, getting into the mix as well.

As for how the season has gone so far, members of the team had different views. De Spong called it a “grind,” Seabald said “magical” before changing his answer to “accomplished,” Alberty said “hard working or painful” and Kalkman said “diversified.”

As impressive as this hurdling group has been, Kalkman doesn’t believe that this year is the limit for what they can achieve, as all except Sebald will be returning next year for another season.“That jump from junior to senior years is significant, so I would expect actually to be the more impressive group of hurdlers,” said Kalkman. “And then we got our next young guys that are training for that… So we’re going to try to keep it going.”

The lights don’t seem too bright for the hurdlers this year as they hope to help Brophy capture a state title, which would be their first since back-to-back championships in 2013 and 2014, thanks in no small part to the hurdling prowess of Allen and Grant.

As of this season, the program has won multiple invitationals against top teams in the state, including the Aztec Invitational, the Devon Allen AMDG Invitational, the Father Olivier “Friendship” Invitational, and the NDP Our Lady of Victory Invitational.

The camraderie and chemistry that the group has built will be important as they enter into the championship season.

“I think we’ve just been teammates for so long and that you don’t see a lot of teams with this many hurdlers, so we’ve had a lot of time, like training together,” said De Spong.

The Open State Championships will be on May 10 and 11 at Mesa Community College. Sebald and De Spong have already achieved the automatic qualifying standard needed to advance for the 110-meter hurdles and Sebald has achieved the mark for the 300-meter hurdles.