By REID TUCKER
South Walton High School’s Christian Friis has done it again. The rising Seahawk senior claimed his second-straight national championship in the decathlon with a gold-medal performance at the 2015 USA Track & Field Junior Olympics 17-18-year-old division decathlon, held July 28 at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville.
Friis, who took the win by just three points over the runner-up, had to fight – at times from behind – for his championship, just as he did last year at the Amateur Athletic Union Junior Olympic Nationals. But, then as now, Friis proved he has what it takes to stand atop the podium among the very best high school track and field athletes in the nation. He also demonstrated tremendous fighting spirit, having just recovered from an Achilles tendon injury that had him sidelined for the duration of the high school track season and had him questioning whether or not he was in good enough condition to get a repeat win on the national stage.
“I had plenty of time to lift weights when I was injured, but that wasn’t going to help me in running events, and it always seems to come down to the 1,500-meter run in big meets like this,” Friis said. “You just have to tell yourself that you can’t give up. You have to try your hardest and work for every second.”
True to his prediction, the outcome of the meet did come down to the 1,500. In the first day of the competition, Friis posted marks of 11.77 seconds in the 100-meter dash, 20 feet, 57 inches in the long jump, 46-08 ¼ in the shot put, 5-10 ¾ in the high jump and 52.17 in the 400-meter run, but there was a deficit of about 100 points separating him from then-leader Aaron Pullin. Friis rallied in the second day, starting with a wins the 110-meter hurdles (14.97) and discus throw (138-06), though he slipped back to third place by the time of the pole vault (11-11 ¾), leaving him 16 points behind the leader after he won the javelin throw by better than 30 feet (176-08).
Friis got those 16 points back in dramatic fashion when it came time for the 1,500 run, outpacing Pullin from the get-go and holding on to edge past his rival by a time of 4:50.81 versus the silver medalist’s 4:54. Even days later the excitement in Friis’ voice was so thick it was palpable.
“It’s always been a dream of mine to win at the national level,” he said. “It was a dream come true just to compete. I still can’t really believe I won, not once but twice.”
Three other Willie Parker prospects did well at the USATF National Junior Olympics too. Recent Freeport High School grad and Florida International University signee Sam Morgan finished 14th in the 17-18 division decathlon, posting a final score of 5,610, while 13-14 division participants Owen Wellborn and Anthony Bryan took sixth in the pole vault (10-08) and seventh in the pentathlon (2,697 points), respectively.
