Garden Plain’s Brooke Hammond sprints to four golds, Owls win team track state title
On the day she found out that the entire track and field season last spring was being canceled, Brooke Hammond cried.
Most multi-sport athletes view track as a sport to keep them in shape for their other sports. Hammond is the opposite. She is a track athlete to her core who plays volleyball in the fall and basketball in the winter in preparation for the spring.
“Track has been my favorite sport since I started doing it when I was six,” Hammond said. “It’s always going to have a deep place in my heart, so losing it was very tough. But I just looked at it as more time to keep grinding and keep pushing.”
After two years of waiting, Hammond unleashed the best version of herself, created in part during that lost season, in her triumphant return to Cessna Stadium on Saturday.
The Garden Plain junior was the star of the Kansas high school state track and field meet, winning a Class 2A gold medal in all four of her races and helping the Owls win their second straight team championship. In her two career state track meets, Hammond has racked up five individual titles, two relay titles and two team titles.
“It was just unreal to watch,” said Kevin Hammond, her father. “She has this determination and she’s been that way since she was six. She just goes. Sometimes during the season she’ll get upset because no one pushes her and I keep telling her it’s going to come.”
The push never came on Saturday, as Hammond proved to be the most superior girls sprinter in Kansas in relation to the peers in her class.
In the 100, Hammond won by more than seventh-tenths of a second over the field, practically unheard of in that short of a distance. Her time of 12.27 seconds — without a push, mind you — was faster than all state champions other than the two highest classes, while it ranked as the sixth-fastest all weekend in all classes.
In the 200, Hammond’s winning time of 25.65 was more than a full second faster than the field — again the largest margin of any state champion. In the 400 relay, with Hammond on the anchor, Garden Plain (49.97) cracked 50 seconds for the first time this season and won the race by well past a full second.
“It’s pretty incredible to watch her race,” Garden Plain girls coach Eric Rockers said. “Brooke is just a special person. This is something she’s worked very hard for for a long time and it’s great to see her hard work pay off today.”
Hammond is almost always immediately recognizable in any race because it looks like she starts races by being shot out of a cannon. Not only does she have an advantage in speed and strength, her technique exploding out of the blocks is unmatched.
“She is just amazing,” said senior Allison Catlin, who won a gold with Hammond on the 400 relay and also won titles in the 100 and 300 hurdles races. “In practice, I always know she’s going to be ahead of me and she gives me someone to chase. It’s really great to have someone like that on your team like that who can push you.”
Hammond was able to reach this level through years of diligent work on the track. Even after more than a decade of running, Hammond said her love for the sport is only growing.
“I stay after practice when we’re done with our workouts when my legs are completely dead,” Hammond said. “I just keep working, keep trying to improve. I know I have to keep pushing.”
Those extra workouts pay off for situations like on Saturday when she was stuck running in the first heat of the 400 finals, generally regarded as the slower heat in races.
Without running head-to-head against her stiffest competition, Hammond still was able to run a faster time (1:00.79) essentially on her own than the winner of the second heat (1:01.48).
She actually has experience in pulling off the rare feat — she did it as a freshman in 2019 when she won the 200 title out of the slower heat as well.
“I didn’t really anticipate anything in that race just because I know it’s very tough to win (in the slower heat),” Hammond said. “I just went out and did the best I could. It’s tough because you’re not neck and neck with anyone, but I pushed myself the whole way and it ended up paying off.”
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