Wichita Southeast boasts first 100 Kansas state track champion since 1998
On top of the podium, staring out to thousands of spectators at University Stadium this past Saturday, the significance of what he had just achieved finally hit Dejuan Colbert.
The last two times he had competed at the Kansas state high school track and field meet, he had come agonizingly close to winning the Class 6A title in the 100-meter dash. He lost by one one-hundredths of a second in 2023 and by two one-hundredths of a second in 2024.
There was no close call this time, however, as the Wichita Southeast senior sprinter was crowned 6A champion, as his time of 10.52 seconds won the race by nearly two tenths of a second, an uncommon margin of victory in Kansas’ largest classification.
But there was no wild celebration immediately after winning from Colbert, who didn’t show much emotion at all until he finally let loose a grin at the top of the podium with a gold medal draped around his neck.
“Honestly, it didn’t feel real until I got up there on that podium,” Colbert said. “It was like, ‘Wow, I really did win. I finally did it.’ I don’t know, it was weird, I didn’t really believe it was real.”
After Colbert came so close to winning the past two years, Southeast coach John Wright noticed an even stronger drive from his star sprinter than before.
“We’re talking about a hundredth of a second from being a state champion two years in a row,” Wright said. “It could have been him. But it didn’t turn out that way and he stayed patient and just went to work. It turns out, the third time is a charm.”
Entering his final year, Colbert obsessed over the details in his 100 race.
“I focused on all of the little things more,” he said. “I worked on pushing hard off the blocks a lot. I stayed after practice longer to figure that out. I even worked on my lean because I really didn’t know how to do it before, but I worked on it and I’m way better at it now. Coming that close just made me work 10 times harder.”
In dissecting his winning race, Colbert said his improved explosion out of the blocks paid dividends. He also added a fourth-place finish in the 200, which was the third straight year Colbert has collected 6A state medals in both of the short sprints.
Colbert also became the first 100 boys champion at Southeast since Mario Ponds in 1998.
“For our program, it doesn’t get any better than this,” Wright said. “We wanted to give Southeast track a boost and bring it back to relevancy and we’ve done that. Now it’s time to take it to another level and we’re working on that. Southeast is going to be a force to reckon with.”
This story was originally published June 2, 2025 at 6:09 AM.
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