Whiteland’s Matthew Wray, center, competes in the 200-meter dash at the state meet in June. Wray, a rising junior, is in California this week running the 200 at the USATF National Junior Olympics.
Daily Journal file photo
By almost any measure, Matthew Wray’s 2022 track season was wildly successful.
Though somewhat overshadowed locally by Center Grove senior Brandon Wheat, Wray qualified for the state meet in his specialty, the 200-meter dash, and placed 11th with a time of 22.09 seconds. He was the lone sophomore in the top 17, and only two juniors finished ahead of him.
Finishing so tantalizingly close to the podium motivated Wray to take his training to the next level this summer, so he began working out with Katie Wise, a former state champion at Indian Creek and collegiate All-American who now coaches the sprinters at Marian University.
Wise hadn’t done any private coaching before, preferring to take her summers off, but she was intrigued by Wray’s talent as well as the opportunity to work with a fellow Johnson County native.
“I definitely did put him through some more intense workouts than what he was used to,” Wise said. “Just kind of playing around with some things, seeing what he can handle, but not trying to overdo it.”
Additionally, Wise pointed Wray toward the USA Track and Field Junior Olympics series, which gave him a chance to keep his competitive fire burning during the offseason.
Wray competed in a meet at Manchester College and then earlier this month in a regional at Wabash College, where he finished sixth in the 200 to qualify for this week’s USATF National Junior Olympics in Sacramento, California. The Warrior junior-to-be will compete in the preliminary round on Wednesday; should he advance, the semifinal heats will be run on Thursday and the final on Saturday.
Just earning the chance to compete on a national stage is more than Wray could have imagined before this summer.
“It’s been a crazy opportunity for me,” he said. “I never thought I would be able to get to where I am now.”
The surprise stems in part from the fact that Wray didn’t even compete in the 200 regularly until he got to high school.
He posted a best time of 22.91 seconds as a freshman and cut that all the way down to 22.02 by the regional meet this spring — startling even Whiteland coach Brandon Bangel, who looked at Wray and immediately saw the 200 as being right in his wheelhouse.
Wray doesn’t have the most explosive starts, Bangel reasoned, but “he’s got great top-end speed. Once he gets up and he’s going, he’s got great technique, he’s got very little wasted movement.”
On top of that natural talent, Wray is also a student of the game. Unlike other high school sprinters who focus their energy on other sports and then run track as a side hustle, Wray is fully invested in track — so much so that he’ll watch collegiate and international meets and look for different technical adjustments that he can incorporate into his own races.
Bangel recalls a moment during the season where Wray had noticed something about how Noah Lyles — who broke the American record in the 200 last Thursday night by running a 19.31 at the world championships — positioned his starting blocks and adjusted his own accordingly.
“I’d see the top sprinters doing some certain things and be like, ‘Maybe I need to start doing that,’” Wray said, “and then I definitely noticed some improvements.”
Wray hopes to crack the 22-second barrier this week in California, but regardless of how he performs out west, he’s confident that this meet will better prepare him for other big-time competitions such as the next two high school state meets.
“It gives me good experience,” Wray said of the Junior Olympics. “It gets me not so stressed out and nervous about going to state, because at these big meets, there’s a ton of people there, and that’s how the state meet is. You get used to it and try to get the nerves away so you can just go out and run.”
“It won’t seem like as big of a deal as it was this year,” Bangel agreed.
After missing the final, and a medal, by just 11 hundredths of a second in his first state meet appearance, Wray’s goal of an eventual state championship doesn’t seem so far-fetched, especially since he still hasn’t fully physically matured or spent much time in the weight room yet.
This week’s experience should offer him not only a reminder of how far he’s already come, but a taste of what’s still possible.
