King Beard switches gears from 200 to 100 for Lakota

FeedzyKing Beard finishes in top four in state or better in three events for Lakota track. Read More

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Bellevue High School held its 151st commencement ceremony for 150 seniors at the First National Bank Field at the Bellevue Athletic Facility on the evening of May 29, 2026.
(Roger LaPointe/The News-Messenger)

King Beard focused almost exclusively on his block starts in the 100-meters during the week before the state track meet.
The Lakota senior couldn’t get things calibrated the way he wanted and he finally made a vital decision to ditch the blocks for the final in Division IV. His wisdom led to a third-place finish at 11.12 seconds.
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“I worked every day at practice,” Beard said of his block starts. “I couldn’t stay down in the blocks. Without the blocks, I did stay down.”
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Beard surprised himself.
“I wasn’t even supposed to make the finals,” he said. “Third was a big deal. I was excited after that.”
Beard actually assumed the 200 would be his best event this season. He was fourth in the state this year at 22.54.
“The 200 was the main thing I focused on,” he said. “Once the season started, I was better at the 100. I was getting faster, but I wasn’t keeping my speed. I kept PRing in the 100.”

Lakota’s King Beard runs in the 200 meters during the Division IV state meet June 5, 2026, at Ohio State. (photo by John Hulkenberg)
He ran a career-best at 10.99 in the 100 in regional preliminaries. He finished sixth in the state in the 200 in a career-best 22.12 as a junior.
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“I didn’t make it in the 100 last year,” he said. “That was big. We didn’t make the finals in the 4×400. We did this year. I got better every day and it made the week amazing.”
Beard will exhale and use the next two weeks to determine whether he will run track and play basketball, or choose one or the other for three possible small school destinations.
He led off a 4×400 relay with Avery Shilling, Brady Tyson and Donovan Statham that was third at state at 3:24.73. The 4×400 established a personal best, which meant a school record, in prelims and finals from the Sandusky Bay Conference River Division Championships to regional.
“For three weeks leading up to state it was PR, win, PR, win,” Beard said. “We PRed and won every race. We were seeded first and someone would beat (our seed time). We’d PR and we were seeded first. It was cool to jump back and forth like that.”
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The relay quartet, which established a program record in the 4×400 for the first time in the postseason last year, has been together since the eighth grade, when it advanced to state.
“The first two years (in high school), after we made it to state it was kind of a letdown,” Beard said. “It wasn’t what we wanted. We had high hopes of making it back to state. We stuck together.”
They were unified and consistent, through mostly the exact same ups and downs. They always had each other.
“We talked about it all the time,” Beard said. “We’ve been together so long. We are all best friends so we hung out a lot and did our workouts together and basically everything track related. A lot of things outside of track, too. Being together and PRing together — it’s fun to see your friends do better.”
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The relay enjoyed capping off every competition for five years, most often with a victory as seniors.
“It’s the end of the meet, usually it got dark and the lights came on with everybody around to see the last event,” Beard said. “It felt like a big stage.”
mhorn@gannett.com
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This article originally appeared on Fremont News-Messenger: Lakota’s King Beard third in state for Lakota OHSAA track championship