CHARLESTON — Landis Musser put all his eggs into one basket on Thursday morning.
One of Riverdale's most potent runners decided to pull out of the open 800 and turn his entire attention in the 1,600-meter preliminaries at O'Brien Field on the campus of Eastern Illinois University.
"Two, three weeks ago, his preference was the 1,600," Rams distance coach Kevin Claus said. "We thought the 1,600 would be the better event. It came down to his preference, what he felt best in doing."
His preference was spot on.
Musser won the opening heat in 4 minutes, 25.68 seconds and turned in the second-fastest prelim time by a winner behind teammate and classmate Tommy Murray during the Class 1A portion of the three-day state meet.
"All the stars aligned," Musser stated.
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Musser closed in 1:03.80 to clip Elgin's David Peterson by .1 seconds. Murray darted around the blue track in a time of 4:20.80 in the last heat.
Now, side-by-side, they'll get to chase a state championship on Saturday.
"It is going to be a little emotional going in," Musser said. "It is going to be a tough race. We are looking forward to it."
Murray ran his first 800 in 2:07 then started to coast in running his final two laps in over 1:06 each. Then, he got a little spooked.
Isaiah Hill of Elmwood ran a 59-second final lap and finished runner-up to Murray by under one second. Murray didn't see Hill until he turned around after crossing the line.
"I broke out 200-meters into the first lap," Murray said. "I was thinking there would be people following me."
One of the few things left on Murray's high school resume is a state title. He came up short in cross country and will have two finals to try and win an elusive gold medal.
Motivation isn't hard to come by for the Creighton recruit.
"Every workout, every short run, every long run, has been leading up to this," Murray said. "I want to end it with a banger."
Claus had high praise for his two senior distance standouts afterwards.
"This is something that has been in the works for four years," Claus said. "Those two are the most self-disciplined, dedicated, responsive athletes I've ever coached.
"They handled everything really well today. A big thing in distance running is know how to feel a race. Each of them did in different ways today."
Alleman's 3,200-meter relay consisting of Danny Darrow, Noah Vercha, Ben Milner and Noah Britton smashed their previous season-best time by seven seconds to place third in the prelims.
Britton closed in 1:58.93, but it was Milner that got them into the lead with his 2:05.69 leg.
"I knew that I needed to get out hard," Britton said. "There are some kids that have pretty good kicks."
Britton had a fast turnaround in running the open 800 and he snuck into the top-12 with the ninth best time of 1:59.33 to run in two finals during Saturday's last day.
The junior admitted he was battling a cough before the race, but it started to disappear once the race started.
My legs were feeling it, I came into that race sitting and kicking," Britton said. "The main goal today was to make it into that final spot on Saturday."
Rockridge star sprinter Peyton Locke will be in three finals in less than 48 hours.
The senior qualified in the 100 and 200-meter dashes and teamed with Alex Zarlatanes, Ryan Hines and Jacob Freyermuth in the 800 relay to place fifth overall in 1:31.57.
"I think it went fantastic," Locke said about the relay. "We can get more fluid and just run harder a little bit. We ran our best throughout the whole year and we have something to improve on."
Locke was in the fifth and final heat in the open 100 and ran 10.98 seconds, only to be clipped by Judah Christian's Daryl Okeke, who dashed to a time of 10.92.
Afterwards, Locke stated his form broke down trying to chase Okeke.
"It pushed me a lot, almost too much," Locke said. "I work on my form all the time and I was a little upset that I let it get the best of me. Slowly and slowly, he got farther and farther away from me."
He ran just under 22 seconds in the 200. Now, the returning state medalist will try an approach that he thinks may be beneficial to calm his nerves and keep his form.
I'm just going to imagine this is a regular meet, nothing special," Locke said. "Just try to mello out the whole situation."
Fulton's Braiden Damhoff uncorked a throw of 48-10.75 to reach the finals in the shot put and Mercer County's Chase Olson leaped 42-07.50 to have the third-best distance in the triple jump.
Morrison freshman Brady Anderson will be in the 100 final.
