As Vineyard runner Zach Utz closes out his senior year, he holds the regional high school record in the mile both indoors and out. Coming off a third place finish in the event at the all-state meet Saturday, there are few who can challenge him on the track.
Utz’s third place finish with a time of 4:22 serves as both the new school record and his ticket to the New England Championships. There, he’ll try to lower his time to 4:19 in order to qualify for the elite mile category at New Balance Nationals in New York. He’s already qualified for the meet’s emerging elite category, a step below elite and the fastest high school runners in the country.
Utz said he got off to a slow start in the mile at all-state, spending most of the race catching up with his competitors to reach a third place finish.
“Honestly my head is pretty empty when I’m racing,” he said. “It’s really about pace . . . and getting in front of the guy in front of you.”
But Utz isn’t one to brag much about his records — or anything else for that matter. In an interview with the Gazette Monday, he attributed much of his success to his coaches and teammates.
“We’re very tight-knit, we’re very close,” he said. “And I think that’s a thing a lot of teams don’t have.”
Utz was a piece of the school’s 4×800-meter relay team alongside runners Jonathan Norton, Daniel Da Silva and Daniel Serpa. Also competing at the all-state meet Saturday, the relay team fell just short of a qualifying time for nationals.
“We’ve been trying the whole time I’ve been in high school to go to nationals in the relay,” he said. But just making the state meet was an accomplishment for the team, he said. And as the spring track season approaches, he said the team is looking to make states again.
Before then, Utz has two more meets ahead of him to focus on for this indoor track season: the New England championships this Saturday and New Balance Nationals on March 12.
As he sits on the cusp of two of the year’s most prestigious meets, Utz is still looking to improve. He said the team subscribes to a mantra of getting better every week, and he feels as though he’s ready to show that improvement in the coming weeks.
“I think I still have a lot more in me, and I can do a lot better,” he said.
But as the Vineyarders’ only qualifier, he admitted training for the biggest meets of the year is lonely. He’s already looking ahead to the outdoor season and running with the team again.
“Just getting out there with the guys will be nice, because right now I’m training alone,” he said.
Bonding with his teammates over miles spent on the Vineyard’s trails was lost for Utz during the cross country season this fall, when he was sidelined for eight weeks with a stress fracture.
“It was really hard to watch my teammates run when I couldn’t be out there,” he said. But he did get to see his teammates grow and improve throughout the season, earning a divisional championship.
“And that was a great experience,” he said.
Utz wasted no time during his return to the team, bringing fire to his performances from the gun. His bronze finish at all-state came less than two months after he first laced up following the stress fracture.
“I didn’t think I lost a lot [of fitness],” he said. Either way, he said he sees running as more of a mental test than a physical one. And he has seemingly mastered the art of composure under stress.
“Once you start [running] it becomes kind of a . . . it’s like a retreat,” he said. “It’s how I stay sane.”
Looking ahead, he said he wants to continue the trajectory he’s on, aiming to lower his school record in the outdoor mile from 4:20 to somewhere around 4:15. Ideally, he said he’d like to get as close to 4:10 as possible.
“That’s the big goal in the sky . . . but we shall see,” he said.
To even consider times that fast is a mark of a top athlete, assistant coach Don Brown told the Gazette Sunday.
“[Utz is] just a step above a lot of people,” he said. “Sometimes going from 4:31 to 4:30 — that’s impossible.”
Even as Utz has ascended to become one of the top runners in the state, he’s kept a level head. He has chosen Middlebury College, a division three school, to continue his running career, despite having the talent of a division one runner.
“I didn’t really want to go division one,” he said. “I wanted to have freedom in college.”
For Utz, the desire to succeed comes from a love of his sport — no matter the competition.
“I just love running,” he said. “It’s my identity, pretty much.”
Corrected from an earlier version which reported that Duncan Brown was the fourth member of the 4×800 relay; the runner was Daniel Serpa.
