Her whole focus was changed on a cool afternoon on the Tecumseh track last season.

Junior Audrey Diller has been running track since her middle school days with the Arrows, but now, she has a lot more to keep her focused on what should be a solid final two seasons with the track program.

Diller set the Tecumseh school record in the 300 meter hurdles, finishing with a time of 47.73, which is now a new school record. She now turns her attention to adding to her record, and solidifying her name atop the record books at Tecumseh High School.

She broke the record during the first half of the CBC meet, then came back and beat that record again to set the current mark at Tecumseh.

“I didn’t know I had the record afterwards,” she said. “I finished up and went into school to watch my sister at her choir concert, and my dad told me to go check the record board and I was surprised that I just beat the record.”

“She started the year running around 52 seconds and then she set the school record and earned the number 1 seed at the CBC preliminaries with a time of 47.71 seconds,” Tecumseh coach Mark Holbrook said. “The old record was set in 2014 by Katie Herdman (currently running for Union College) (48.37 seconds).”

Diller began running cross country in seventh grade, but admittingly wasn’t a very talented distance runner. She also went for track that season also.

“I started the hurdles in seventh grade,” she said. “Coach Pritt asked me to try the hurdles for the first time during a meet, and I have been running them ever since.”

With the success she had as a sophomore, she will never forget not only the record she set, but some wise words from a friend.

“My friend Caleb Young passed at the beginning of the season, and he always this quote ‘go big or go home’,” Diller said. “I told myself I was going to do this season for Caleb and do my best for him.”

She looks ahead now to what she hopes is an equally successful junior season coming up in the spring.

“I want to keep working harder this year and will probably be doing other events as well,” she said, and stated honestly that she doesn’t do a lot with track in the off-season, other than a little running at the track.

Her former cross country coach, and current assistant track coach Dan Vaughan also talked about her ability to succeed on the track.

“She is a race day runner, when the lights go on she runs really hard,” Vaughan said. “She exploded when she got to high school.”

“Usually the kids who break school records are varsity runners as a freshman, but Audrey really had to earn it. She was a pleasant surprise. I expect her to take the next logical step and make it to regionals.”

“Audrey really is deceiving faster than what she looks,” Holbrook said. “The coaching staff noticed this improvement in her speed our 2nd meet of the year when we placed her in two open events (200m and 400m) at the Urbana Quad. We then placed her in the 4x200 m relay team and she accepted the role with the other girls as they were crowed CBC champions in that event (Along with Hailey Beel, Allison Berner, and Paige Benton).”

Diller was named one of the seasons most improved runners and she also won the teams “Golden Baton: Award which is given to an athlete who give back to the younger runners and also helps the middle school athletes during the course of the year.

“One thing that the coaches love about Audrey always wants to improve and she never gets down on herself,” Holbrook said. “She is always upbeat and positive and is one of the most coachable athletes we have on the team. She stays after practice and works on the hurdles by herself and she has already started this summer in working for next season.”

Down the road, she hopes to run at the next level, and is considering running cross country this fall for Vaughn.

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