There’s a certain standard to being a sprinter at Homewood-Flossmoor. 

The boys track team won the 400-meter relay and finished second in the 800-meter relay at state last May. Zion Morrison placed in both the 100- and 200-meter dashes. The Vikings finished second in team points. 

And that’s just last year.

H-F owns an impressive legacy in the short distance races. In 2023, H-F’s “8-man army” won state by scoring 58 points in the sprints and short relays alone. The 2018 and 2019 teams both finished second in Class 3A largely on the backs of the sprinters.

“Since my freshman year (H-F track has) been sprint heavy, maybe more than anything,” senior Joaquin Jordan said. “We’ve got to try to keep that tradition and then add onto it. It means a lot.” 

Some meets, the best three or four times in a sprint are all H-F runners. With all that talent, practices can be competitive. The Vikings believe they all get better because they run against each other daily. 

“We’ve been able to build a culture that’s an expectation, so when kids come in the door it’s like ‘I want to be a part of this,’” coach Nate Beebe said. “It really comes down to competition for the spots. Our practices are intense because they’re trying to vie for the top five or six to have a shot.” 

The Vikings say they talk about a state championship during every one of those practices. They opened the season ranked No. 1 in the state by Milesplit. 

The sprint group knows that if it handles its business, the team will earn that ranking.

“This is what we do for our life,” Jordan said. “We’re out here every day to get better and push ourselves.” 

Jordan and Myles Ellis, who both signed to play football for North Dakota State next fall, each said they take their roles as leaders seriously. They want to make sure the younger group understands what it means to sprint at Homewood-Flossmoor.

“There’s guys here faster than me. You can’t have no days off,” Ellis said. “It’s bragging rights. If you winning in practice, you win on meet day. That’s how we do it. We treat practice like it’s a meet.”  

With the amount of talented sprinters available, H-F coaches have options when putting together relay teams. The goal there, Beebe said, is maximizing team points. 

Charles Dees forced his way into the relays as a freshman in 2025. Personnel decisions in track are not subjective. Nobody can argue with the stopwatch, and Dees’ practice data was undeniable. 

He ran a leg of the 400-meter relay with Morrison, Ellis and Jordan during the postseason, eventually winning a state championship.

“It’s a confidence boost,” Dees said. “Coming to practice, I have something to look forward to. I’m still an underclassman so there’s guys I look up to that are faster than me that I can compete with every day.” 

The most ambitious aims are beyond a state title, though. H-F sprinters want to break state records and several of them are within the realm of possibility. 

Coaches just want the Vikings to focus on the things they can control, like training properly and taking care of their bodies. The rest, they hope, takes care of itself.

“It’s easy to get caught up in preseason hype, so we really try to emphasize that we haven’t done anything, yet,” Beebe said. “It’s not an easy thing to walk out on that track and perform well at Eastern Illinois (at state). It helps a lot that they’ve had some experience doing that, and we do have a very good group of seniors. They have the right mentality, and they’re doing a good job of leading.”