Virginia Boys' Track Athlete of the Year
In its third decade of honoring the nation's best high school athletes, Gatorade joined with RISE Magazine to name senior distance runner PETER DORRELL of BLACKSBURG HIGH as its 2007-08 Virginia Boys' Track and Field Athlete of the Year.
The state's returning 2006-07 Gatorade Boys Track and Field Athlete of the Year, Dorrell swept the 1,600-meter and 3,200-meter events at the Group AA state meet, leading the Bruins to a third-place finish overall as a team. The senior distance runner won the 1,600-meter race with a time of 4:18.29 and captured the 3,200-meter run in 9:19.73. He placed second in the 800-meter event at the state meet with a time of 1:55.96. Dorrell won the mile event at the Southern Track Classic with a time of 4:14.46, which ranked as the nation's No. 11 scholastic performance in 2008 at the time of his selection.
Dorrell has maintained a 3.22 GPA in the classroom. In addition to volunteering for the Special Olympics and assisting as a course marshal at local running and cycling events, he has donated his time organizing events for the Clayton Estates Trailer Park and helping to assemble Thanksgiving baskets for less fortunate families in the area. He also leads a Bible studies group of fellow high school students. Dorrell spent a week cleaning bathrooms, fixing doors and playing with children at orphanages in Vietnam as part of a service mission trip and also helped teach English at a school in the northeast region of Japan.
"You can't do what he's done, and you can't run successfully in two to three events if you haven't done the work," said Blacksburg High head coach James DeMarco. "To do it over and over takes a strong work ethic. Peter's not a one-race type of guy. It's been years in the making. Now he's getting all the rewards from it."
Dorrell has signed a National Letter of Intent for track and field at the College of William and Mary for this fall.
