Senior standout wins long and triple jumps CHARLESTON -- Troy Doris' magical day was missing only one thing -- the fairy tale ending.

Doris, the Bolingbrook High School senior, won two events and ran the anchor leg on the Raiders' sixth-place finishing 4x100 relay team in the Class AA boys state track and field meet Saturday at O'Brien Stadium.

He captured titles in the long jump (23-7¾) and triple jump (50-9) after building big leads in both events on Friday and then falling short of topping his own marks on Saturday.

His bid to smash both state records was hampered by an early-morning rain that left the long jump runway slick and prevented him from popping loose later in the triple jump.

"I'm not mad," Doris said. "I can't blame anybody but myself. I was just taking it easy. I didn't want to scratch on my last jump (in the triple jump event). So, I just moved back and adjusted and just went for it.

"I didn't really try to get perfect on the board. I had to move back and get what I could get out of it, you know."

He raised both arms when he splashed down in the sand pit. A loud cry of "oohs" and "aahs" came from the crowd gathered on the East Side of the stadium to support him. Then, Doris picked himself up and noticed his rear end was tailing.

"I thought it was pretty good until I saw where my butt was," he said. "I looked back and I was like, 'Aw, man. It could have been a record.' But I couldn't keep my butt out of the sand."

Still, he returned home with three medals to show for his weekend's work and boosted his two-year medal count to five, three of them gold. He also led Bolingbrook a fifth-place finish in the team title chase. The Raiders scored 31 points.

Cahokia edged East St. Louis in a tight battle for the crown (63-61). Springfield Lanphier followed in third place with 46 points and Elmhurst York took fourth with 32.

"No better way," Doris said. "I mean to get three medals, that's a big accomplishment. People would die to get three state medals. I'm pretty happy. I didn't do my best. But I'm still pretty happy."

Doris was one of 11 area individual medal winners in the Class AA meet. His heroic performance came on a day when Lincoln-Way East's Joe Noonan was engaged in an epic battle in the pole vault and Jacob Arnold became Plainfield North's first medal winner in any boys state competition.

Noonan, a senior, cleared a personal-best 16-6 in the pole vault en route to a second-place finish behind Mitchell Erickson of Marian Catholic. Their back-and-forth battle finally ended after Erickson soared up and over 16-9 and both took their shots at cracking a 15-year-old state record.

Noonan passed after missing on his first attempt at 16-9 until the bar was raised to 17-1. He then nearly cleared that mark on both of his final two attempts.

"I knew he's been really good for a long time," Noonan said of Erickson. "I was definitely watching out for him when I came down here. I had to move up to 17-1 because he had me on misses at 16-6.

"And I was so close. I wanted one more attempt at that."

Arnold, the Tigers' super sophomore, blazed out to a strong start in the open 400 meters. He led the race from Lane 8 for nearly 250 meters before running out of gas and settling for a ninth-place finish. He was clocked in 49.95.

"I feel good," Arnold said. "We're starting a tradition that is going to live on forever. We've got our name out there. That's what counts."

Romeoville's Raymon "Ray Gun" Parker topped other area finishers with his run to second place in the 100-meter dash. He finished with a personal-record time of 10.61 seconds. He stumbled ever-so-slightly coming out of the blocks and the mishap cost him the title that went to Springfield Southeast's Demarcus Brooks in a time of 10.57.

Brooks just missed shattering the state record.

"I kind of did the same thing as yesterday -- I tripped out of the blocks," Parker said. "But I tried to pick up. And that guy from Springfield (Brooks) -- he's a good runner. I ran against him during summer track. He's a good kid.

"I think I was kind of messed up because I caught a cold my first day down here. But it was a good day. I'm glad I came in second."

Plainfield Central had two individual medal winners. Sophomore Josh Winder placed eighth in the pole vault with a mark of 15-0. Senior Jonathan Anderson took seventh in the 110 hurdles with a time of 14.86. His sister, Valencia, also was a hurdles medal winner. She ran in the girls state meet last weekend for Plainfield North.

Bolingbrook's Kayode Adegoke placed eighth in the 100 (10.98) and eighth in the 200 (22.34). Lockport's Kyle Engnell took sixth in the 800 (1:56.60) and teammate Dusty Sluzewicz placed ninth in the 200 (22.68).

Lincoln-Way East's Adam Gettis finished sixth in the discus (168-6) and ninth in the shot put (55-0½). Teammate Marvin Cosby placed seventh in the 400 (49.17).

The only other area individual medal winner was Bolingbrook's Lewis Brown. He placed seventh in the 800 with a time of 1:56.73. The Raiders' Reggie Williams and Corve Smith teamed with Adegoke and Doris for a sixth-place finish in the 400 relay. The four were clocked in 42.44.

No records. Lots of hype.

"I'm not superhuman," Doris said. "I mean, what you get out of me is what you get. The expectations -- what people were wanting me to do -- I can't do it all the time. It's a process. It's over time."