Waimea’s Moses Fierro was not really on the radar to be a top finisher in the 200-meter dash at the Hawai‘i High School Athletics Association Championship track meet last weekend. What nobody was able to predict was that Fierro had
Waimea’s Moses Fierro was not really on the radar to be a top finisher in the 200-meter dash at the Hawai‘i High School Athletics Association Championship track meet last weekend. What nobody was able to predict was that Fierro had not yet shown what he could actually do.
Fierro came into the Friday trials as the 17th-ranked runner in the field of 20 for the event, based on his times during the KIF season, and he walked away on Saturday with a gold medal.
“I really had no expectations, even in the trials, because of my ranking,” Fierro said. “I was 17th.”
However, when he finished his Friday heat in a time of 22.61 seconds, Fierro had put up the second-fastest time of the day, securing a spot in the Saturday final.
“My times were way lower than ever,” he said. “I was running a 23 (seconds) flat all season. Then all of a sudden I’m running 22’s over there.”
Moses felt that maybe the better competition had pushed him to put up his best times. With the best runners in the state participating, he had to up his game in order to compete at their level.
After his Friday heat, Moses gained confidence that he could run a similar race on Saturday, but he wasn’t sure that it would be enough the second time around.
“Friday was only trials and some guys weren’t going for their best times,” he said, as some coaches teach their runners to do.
Moses said he was thinking that a second-place finish on Saturday would be his goal.
“I wasn’t expecting to win,” he said. “All I wanted to do was to try the best I can.”
He did entertain the possibility of capturing the gold, though.
“I thought maybe I had a
chance. I thought that would be mean if I could win it.”
When Saturday came, Moses was in the fifth lane of the seven finalists. It turned out to be an exceptionally close race, as the first- and last-place runners crossed the finish line a mere 0.91 seconds apart.
It also turned out to be the fastest Fierro has ever clocked in the 200-meter dash. His sizzling time of 22.42 seconds was just 0.02 seconds ahead of Jonathan Padron of Damien Memorial.
“I didn’t even think that I won,” he said. “I just knew that it was a really close race.”
He shaved about 0.6 seconds off of his KIF times, while not really doing much differently as far as his preparation.
“I got some new shoes and I wasn’t wearing socks, but nothing else was any different.”
As the only KIF track participant in the HHSAAs to win a gold medal, Moses said that the other KIF athletes were all happy for him.
“During the season there is competition, but when we all went to states together, everybody was just raging,” he said.
Amazingly until this, his junior year, Moses had not run track since elementary school. He had played football and soccer at Waimea, but it wasn’t until a couple of his friends convinced him to go out for track that he made the decision to run again.
“They were just saying, ‘You’re fast enough, you should go out for track,’ So I just decided to do it this year.”
Moses has a younger brother about to enter Waimea High next year, who he hopes will come out and run track with him next season. He also plans on playing soccer again, but is not yet sure if he’ll play football next season.
What is for sure is that Moses won’t be sneaking up on anyone again.
