Stuttgart's Hunter Ficenec heads in to the last lap of the boys 1,600-meter race at the DODEA-Europe track and field championships in Kaiserslautern, Germany, Friday, May 27, 2016. He won the race in a new DODEA-Europe record of 4 minutes, 23.30 seconds, and is the Stars and Stripes boys track and field Athlete of the Year. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
Stuttgart's Hunter Ficenec heads in to the last lap of the boys 1,600-meter race at the DODEA-Europe track and field championships in Kaiserslautern, Germany, Friday, May 27, 2016. He won the race in a new DODEA-Europe record of 4 minutes, 23.30 seconds, and is the Stars and Stripes boys track and field Athlete of the Year. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
Stuttgart's Hunter Ficenec on his way to winning the boys 800-meter race at the DODEA-Europe track and field championships in Kaiserslautern, Germany, Friday, May 27, 2016. He won in 1 minute, 57.82 seconds. Earlier in the day he won the 1600-meter event with a new DODEA record. Ficenec has been selected as the Stars and Stripes boys track and field Athlete of the Year. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
It takes major extenuating circumstances for Hunter Ficenec, the 2016 Stars and Stripes boys track and field Athlete of the Year, to not catch up to a goal he’s pursuing.
That’s what happened May 28 at the DODEA-Europe track and field championship meet.
Over two outstanding days, the Stuttgart senior had already claimed gold medals at 800 and 1,600 meters and anchored the Panthers’ winning 3,200-meter relay team. That left one last objective for the day, the season and his distinguished high school career: the 3,200 meter run.
“It was the main event I was focused on all week,” Ficenec said at the time.
Given his performances in the other events that weekend, Ficenec’s focus on the 3,200 was likely to lead to another first-place finish. But he never got to find out.
Heavy rain flooded the Kaiserslautern High School track in the waning hours of the meet, washing away the 3,200 along with a handful of other championship events. Ficenec was one of the athletes left preparing for an event that was not to be run.
Ficenec claimed that event’s title as well on the strength of previous performances in the event - he bested the DODEA-Europe record in the 3,200 in the regular season - but it couldn’t match the import of actually finishing first at the championship meet.
As that last race escaped him, Ficenec was left to find comfort in the other accomplishments of his one and only season in Stuttgart. Luckily, there are more than enough of those.
A transfer from Okinawa, Japan, Ficenec burst onto the DODEA-Europe running scene by winning the European cross country championship in the fall and earning Stars and Stripes boys cross country Athlete of the Year honors in the process.
He was equally dominant in the spring track season, claiming immediate ownership of the sports’ longer-distance runs. At the tournament, he was at his best.
On Friday, he won the 800 and 1,600 by sizeable margins, building a prohibitive early lead in the shorter run and setting a new European record of 4 minutes, 23.30 seconds in the latter event.
Saturday brought perhaps his best and worst moments of the tournament. First, Ficenec broke open a neck-and-neck 3,200 meter relay race with a runaway anchor leg and delivered a new DODEA-Europe record for the Panthers, fulfilling a goal he said the group had just established that day.
“We absolutely had no idea that we could do it,” Ficenec said.
The euphoria of that collective triumph eventually gave way to the letdown of the cancelled 3,200 meter solo race. That’s the one - the only one in Ficenec’s brilliant senior season - that got away.
“I was pretty sad,” Ficenec said. “That could have been my fastest.”
Twitter: @broomestripes
