If it's a test he wanted, this would certainly suffice.
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Jay Carlson for ESPN RISE
Chamberlain's Dentarius Locke dominating the sprinting events at the AAU Junior Olympics.
As Chamberlain (Tampa, Fla.) High's Dentarius Locke milled around before the 100-meter finals of the Charles Johnson Invitational at King High last March, he found himself surrounded by the talented sprinters of Hillsborough.
"All I see is red," recalls Locke, referring to the Terriers' uniforms. Here was Terrence Mitchell, a sophomore standout for Hillsborough's 4x100 and 4x400 relay squads who had qualified for state in the triple jump the previous spring. Over there was junior Lindsey Lamar, a football and track star for the Terriers who was regarded as perhaps the fastest in the county.
Not that Locke was anything to sneeze at. While attending Riverview the previous spring, he had finished third in the 100 at the Class 4A state meet. But this was his first meet since transferring to Chamberlain as a junior and beginning a new training regimen with sprint coach Hansford Johnson.
Locke wanted to see where he stood.
"Right now, I'm so ready," Locke remembers thinking. "It's not dark, cloudy, anything. I'm so ready to try the new technique I learned."
The technique hinged on strategically running in phases rather than going flat out. His mechanics had been scrutinized and meticulously adjusted. He'd run longer drills to improve his endurance. And since the fall, Locke had been lifting weights in earnest for the first time in his career. His practice times had dropped steadily, but this was the real deal.
"It's just him in green and white and like five of their guys," Johnson says. "He felt like it was him against the world."
Locke, a notoriously slow starter, got a good jump at the gun. He half expected to see someone overtake him, but soon it became clear a challenge would never materialize.
He took first and set a new personal record: 10.56 seconds. More important, all of the hard work he had been doing was validated. "To see him come off the blocks the way he did -- he just smoked them," Johnson says.
Locke went on to smoke a lot of people during his junior season. He took first in the 100 (10.72) at the Class 4A state meet and finished second in the 200 in 21.02, more than a second faster than his personal best in the event the previous season at Riverview.
The 5-foot-7, 155-pound Locke then placed second in both the 100 and 200 at the Nike Outdoor Nationals and swept the two sprint events at the AAU Junior Olympics over the summer. He was named Hillsborough County Male Track Athlete of the Year by The Tampa Tribune for the second consecutive season and committed to track powerhouse Tennessee this past fall.
It was a triumphant year made possible by Locke's efforts off the track as much as those on it. During his sophomore year, Locke's grades began to dip, which was one of the reasons he moved in with his father, Jesse, in Tampa and enrolled at Chamberlain.
With his father and coach looking out for him, books came before sprints.
"Until he showed some responsibility in the classroom, we weren't going to get on the track," says Johnson, who took a job at the University of South Florida last summer but still works with Locke.
Just because he was focusing on his schoolwork and not working with Johnson didn't mean Locke was neglecting running altogether. Chamberlain head track and cross country coach Bill Strack noticed that in the fall of 2007. "We'd continuously see this kid out there, seemed like all day long, doing his workouts on his own," Strack says.
The kid was Locke, whose reputation as a top sprinter preceded him at his new school. But he didn't act the part. "I was really pretty impressed," Strack says. "I kind of expected to run into this arrogant, show-off kind of a kid. I couldn't have been more wrong."
Locke is certainly confident and loves to talk track, but he's far from cocky. He has a great deal of respect for his competitors, keeping up with their times on sites like DyeStat.com.
Because of that, Locke knows that although he had perhaps the best season of any underclassman sprinter in the state last year, he will have plenty of competition this season. Hillsborough's Lamar and Oakland Park Northeast's Sean Lange are seniors with comparable times to Locke, though both compete in Class 3A when state comes around. Lakeland's McRoy brothers (Javares and Benjamen), Miami Central's Larry Farlow and Deerfield Beach's Denard Robinson look to be Locke's biggest challenges in Class 4A.
But rather than just try to replicate last season, Locke has even bigger goals in mind as a senior. For starters, he wants to become the first Florida sprinter since Xavier Carter in 2003 to sweep the 100, 200 and 400 at state.
"This year's going to be a very big year for me," he says. "I believe that if I stay focused I can achieve a lot."
Because Locke is a student of the sport, invested in the physics and the intricacies of sprinting, his coaches think the sky is the limit for him.
He's not just sprinting to improve his stock in another sport. Locke started running at Egypt Lake Elementary, won his first county meet at Greco Middle and his passion has only continued to grow.
Over the years, Locke has developed a unique set of rituals. He has specific socks and pre-race songs for each event. He prays as he settles into the blocks. He talks to his mom and dad the night before every race. He even sleeps in his uniform and wears it under his clothes the entire day of the meet.
"If I don't, I do not feel comfortable putting it on the next day," he explains.
Locke should be pretty comfortable putting on the Chamberlain uniform this season. The team placed fifth at state last year and saw a huge turnout of dedicated participants this season. Strack thinks much of that is due to the efforts of Locke and junior Mark Parrish, who was third in the 3,200 at state last spring.
"When Locke came on board, all of the sudden other kids got a lot more serious," Strack says.
In hindsight, the speed with which he influenced his Chiefs teammates shouldn't have come as a surprise.
"Everything he does is just fast," Johnson says.
Lucas O'Neill covers high school sports for ESPN RISE.
