Ranking the Records Countdown - #7

Boys #8
OLIVER BRADWELL, Wichita East, 100m 10.34 (2010)
IAAF Score: 1,092 points



As a senior at Wichita East in the fall of 2009, Oliver Bradwell was named to the Wichita All-Metro soccer team.

He had not played soccer since 8th grade.

Such was the athletic talent of Oliver Bradwell, and it was only a hint at what was to come over the course of the next year.

That June, at the Great Southwest Classic, Bradwell would run a state-record 10.34 100m.  A month later at the World Junior Championships in New Brunswick, Canada, Bradwell would become a World Junior Championship gold medalist as a member of the U.S. World Junior 4x100 relay team.  He would repeat the feat a year later as a member of another U.S. Junior national 4x100 relay team at the Pan Am Junior Championships.

In his one year at Barton County Community College, Bradwell posted indoor marks of 6.83 for 60m and 21.33 for 200m. Outdoors, he ran 10.37 for 100m and 21.15 for 200m.

Of all of the profiles on this countdown, however, Bradwell's has been the most difficult to write.

It will be noted that there are no results for Bradwell for Wichita East in the spring of 2010.  Bradwell had been expelled from Wichita East for discipline and academic problems that had him at three different high schools and spending several stints in juvenile detention during a troubled high school career. 

Bradwell's extraordinary performances but troubled life outside of athletics serve as a reminder that even exceptional talent may need some help to escape the gravitational pull of difficult life circumstances in order to reach full bloom.