“ONCE I RAN 35.05, I knew it was possible.” The ’24 high school season in Arizona was one of revelation, both for Gilbert High’s Vance Nilsson and his opponents. He went undefeated in all of his individual events. In the 300H, his specialty, all season he drew closer to the High School Record of 35.02 set by Californian Reggie Wyatt back in ’09.
“I was just trying to improve my race and towards the end of the season I just kept dropping more and more… Once I got close, it’s like I was analyzing my race, just trying to figure out where I could drop more time, what else I needed to do differently, and I knew I made a couple mistakes in that [35.05] race, so I knew I could do it. I just had to put it all together, and it was my last opportunity, so there was a little bit of pressure, but it all came together.”
It was at the State finals, a meet that he had won the year before in 37.82. This time around, he sailed through the heats in 37.05, then crushed the final in a record 34.83, going 13 steps through the entire race.
“I feel like my life just changed,” Nilsson told the local paper that night. Not long after, he signed with Florida to work with fabled hurdle coach Mike Holloway.
The intermediates wasn’t the only event that the 6-3/160 (1.92/72) Nilsson excelled at this season. He also won the State crown in the 110 highs, after having run a 13.39 at the previous meet. He won both hurdles at the prestigious Arcadia Invitational, and also dabbled in the long sprints twice, ending up with bests of 21.43 and 47.38. All of these marked a big improvement over the ’23 version of Nilsson, who ran 22.63, 49.03, 14.03 and 37.42.
“I wouldn’t call myself a late bloomer,” he says, pausing for a moment before correcting himself: “Actually yeah, I would. I sort of bloomed this year. I joined a club team, did off-season training for the first time, hit the weight room pretty hard, just sort of centered my lifestyle around track for the past year, and everything lined up perfectly timing-wise.”
Nilsson reached out last year to James Smith, who guides the Arizona Flames Track Club. Smith also once coached Devin Green, the first-year Gilbert head coach, as well as his own son, James Smith II, who ran a PR 49.21 in the NCAA final last year for Texas A&M. Nilsson says the relationship between his coaches “worked very…
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