Athlete of the Week: Serra's Armon Plummer

Armon Plummer’s name is all over the Serra track and field frosh-soph record books. But the senior knows it’s going to take some serious doing to take down one of the Padres’ individual varsity marks.

What makes the challenge even more daunting is Plummer switched up his events this season. A natural hurdler, he still runs the 110-meter and the 300 hurdles — the two events in which he holds the program’s frosh-soph records — but he dropped the 4x100 relay in order to shoulder the burden of the 400 for the good of the team.

“I’m not going to lie, I was nervous,” Plummer said. “And it hurts. … I’m a hurdler at heart but they needed me, so I had to step up.”

It was two years ago when standout Kyle Orloff, now at Sacramento State, rewrote the Serra records books, besting the varsity marks in the 200 and 400 meters. And while Plummer is busy eyeing Serra’s hurdles records — he was 1 second shy of the 35-year-old record of 37.8 seconds set by Doug Smith the last time he ran the 300-meter hurdles — that hasn’t stopped him from excelling in his other events.

Saturday at the Central Coast Section Top 8 Meet at Los Gatos High School, Plummer was the only San Mateo County runner to take first place in a track event, topping the field in the 400 with a time of 49.58, earning Daily Journal Athlete of the Week honors in the process.

Plummer also helped Serra to a second-place finish in the 4x400 relay and a fourth-place finish in the 4x100 relay, making the senior the leading point-getter in the Padres’ third-place team finish at the meet.

“He was a huge part of those three events we ran,” Serra head coach Jim Marheineke said. “In the 400, he ran a really good race. It was a really competitive race. That middle 150 (meters) is where he really won the race.”

Plummer’s most exciting performance of the day, however, came in the 4x400 relay, where he nearly pulled off a miracle comeback. Taking the baton for the anchor leg trailing eventual winner Los Gatos by a good 20 meters, Plummer chased down the leader to come out of the final turn neck-and-neck before running out of gas.

“He just didn’t have enough kick,” Marheineke said. “He used up a little too much to get there.”

Serra ultimately took second place in the event with a 3:21.02, finishing a half second behind Los Gatos.

“I wish I video taped it,” Marheineke said. “I had several people come up to me and ask me, what was his split? It was a pretty exciting race.”

That outcome determined the team standings, as Los Gatos (51 points) edged Serra (50) by 1 point in the overall standings. Bellarmine — stunted by the loss of 4x400 relay anchor Kyle Macauley to a hamstring injury — took second place with 50.5 points.

Plummer does share one Serra varsity record in that very 4x400 event. In 2015, the team of Plummer, Noriega Moffett, Marcus Alvarez and Jeremiah Testa twice broke the record, with the top time standing at 3:19.43. The team also owns the frosh-soph record in the same event, set in 2014. This year, Serra returned all but the graduated Alvarez to the team.

In 2014, however, Plummer saw double duty, running for both the frosh-soph and varsity teams; he would run invitational meets for the frosh-soph squad, but would team with varsity at dual meets. During his varsity time as a sophomore, he ran on the same relay team as Orloff.

It was from Orloff, and his hurdles mentor former Serra great Zachary Mitchell, that Plummer learned the golden rule of track greatness — compete against yourself, not against the people in the lanes next to you.

“Competition is great, but for me, I’m out on the track to race against myself,” Plummer said. “I go out to break my own records, not necessarily to beat anybody else.”

The philosophy has served him well. Plummer recently committed to the Division-II program at Fresno Pacific University on a partial athletic scholarship. He, along with triple jumper Jordan Kenison — who will go the Division-I route to compete at Seattle University — will enjoy a formal signing ceremony Wednesday at Serra.