SOUTH POINT — It seems that De’Shaun Garred has something in common with the famous building block toy Legos.
“I’m just a normal guy. I love building me some Legos,” Garred said with a grin. “Legos are amazing. It just relaxes me.”
The South Point Pointers’ senior standout is far from normal when it comes to track. In fact, like Legos he’s quite amazing.
Shawnee State head coach Conner Flynn thinks Garred is pretty amazing and so he had him sign a letter-of-intent to run for the Bears track and field program.
“De’Shaun has had a great high school career. He’s been part of many successful relay teams and also the 300-meter hurdles.” Said Flynn.
“So, as we build our program, we’re looking for more hurdle presence, more of a long sprints presence who can adapt to relays if we need him to. He’s very versatile as far as sprints and jumps, so we look to enhance his ability in those areas but also grow in other events as his college career goes along.”
The fact Shawnee State is developing its track program proved to be one of the reasons Garred chose to sign.
“I saw Shawnee, I looked around the campus, I saw they had what I liked and the track program was building, and I liked the idea I was helping to start that,” said Garred. “And they did have some things I’d like to major in, too.”
Pointers’ head coach Randy Smith has developed many track athletes throughout his career and he said Garred has developed into an outstanding talent.
“He had developed tremendously since I came back last year. I guess versatile is the key word for him. He can run any relay. He runs the 4-by-1, the 4-by-2, the 4-by-4, , he’s run the hurdles. He can high jump, he can long jump,” said Smith.
“He’s willing to step into any spot where we need him. We can run him in one set of events in one meet and then in the next meet run a whole different slate. It’s just where the competition is and where the strengths and weaknesses are that we make adjustments by putting him in certain places. He’s invaluable.”
Running in so many different events is very unusual in track where most athletes prefer to concentrate on their best event. Garred welcomes the challenge.
“Really, I’ll do any event. Just put me in it. I like running them all. It’s fun,” said Garred. “I started doing the 300 hurdles and that’s pretty fun. In college it’s the 400, so I thought that would be really fun to do if I’m able to.”
The fact Garred is able to do a lot of events and do them all very well makes him a candidate to possibly participate in the decathlon in the future.
Again, Garred liked the idea.
“I really feel like I could. If you put me in something, I feel I can adapt to it and compete with everyone around me,” Garred said.
But before he heads off to the Shawnee State campus, Garred said he and his teammates are focused on the current season.
“My goal as of right now is we want to beat the 4-by-1 (relay) school record, we want to continue beating the school 4-by-2 record, and we’re focusing on beating records at the school as well as the OVC (Ohio Valley Conference) meet,” said Garred.
“We want to win district, we want to win regionals, we want to win it all really. That’s our main goal. Just win it all.”
Garred is still uncertain on a major but is leaning toward either Psychology, Occupational Therapy or Physical Therapy.
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