Big (smelly) shoes to fill
Quorteze Levy doesn’t mind the comparison.
He wants to be like his idol, Dustin Fuller, a prolific hurdler and four-time WPIAL Class AA champion for Washington High School last spring.
Even if it means having an absolutely rancid pair of track spikes.
“He wore the same spikes from his freshman year all the way until he graduated,” Levy said. “They were bad. They smelled bad. But he stuck with them. That’s what I’m starting to do.”
Shoes aside, Levy’s emergence this season has been a breath of fresh air.
He has stepped into Fuller’s shoes – though, hopefully, not literally, given Fuller’s new teammates at Pitt forced him to change – and has become the Prexies’ go-to runner for, well, just about anything.
Levy won four events for Wash High at last week’s WPIAL Class AA team championships, including both hurdles events and running on the 3,200 and 1,600-meter relay teams.
Next up for Levy will be today’s WPIAL Class AA individual meet, where he enters as the overwhelming favorite in the hurdles – he won the 300 at the team meet by about a block and a half – and someone who will surely turn some heads in the 3,200 and 1,600 relays.
“I hope so,” Levy said. “That’s the goal.”
How, then, did this happen?
A year ago, Levy didn’t qualify for the 300 hurdles at the WPIAL meet, stuck behind Fuller. He ran only the 3,200 relay at Baldwin.
Levy said it finally registered for him while watching Fuller at the WPIAL meet last year what a big void there’d be when Fuller graduated. And it was then he realized he wasn’t challenging himself enough; to become an elite runner, he had to do more.
“I’ve worked hard all offseason,” Levy said. “My goal is to win states. I know I can do it. I sat there and watched Dustin win, and I saw how amazed his face was. That motivated me.”
Fuller, who remains in daily contact with Washington’s coaches, will attest to that.
“With all due respect, his freshman and sophomore years, he wasn’t a very mature person,” Fuller said. “But from what I hear now – I talk to the coaches all the time – he’s a completely changed person. Whatever they tell him to do, he’ll do it.”
Which wasn’t always the case, Fuller said.
“We would complain at practice a year or two ago when they said we had four 200s, and I told the guys, ‘If you do that in college, they’ll laugh at you.’ I’d be happy now if we had four 200s; we usually do about 20,” Fuller said.
Levy’s sudden ascent can also be pegged to his ability to anchor the 3,200 relay team, a split he’s run as fast as 1:57.
“He was always on the 3,200 relay, and the thing that really helped him with the 300 hurdles was the fact that he runs the 800, too,” Fuller said. “With my training, I would run 500 and 600s in high school, but my college coach told me I was going to have to start running some 800s.
“If you think about it, that’s really what a long hurdler is. If you’re a long hurdler, you shouldn’t have any problem running the 800. I don’t think Quorteze realized what he was doing running the 4×800, but that’s helped him out in all his other events.”
The scary part: Levy is still learning.
At the team meet, he tried to cover up for a bad exchange by blazing through his first lap of the 3,200 relay, only to slow down considerably on the second. But it’s not because he’s incapable; it’s simply managing the race better.
“I work with the distance guys, and my endurance levels are pretty awesome,” Levy said. “I have great lungs. I’m a healthy person. I work out every day. I stretch every day. Drink a lot of water. I come out and I get motivated to run.”
Watch Levy run, and it’s easy to tell he’s running with purpose, his dreadlocks bouncing as he clears hurdle after hurdle. Yet when the rest of his teammates are goofing off and celebrating another victory, Levy prefers to hang back by himself and soak it all in.
His loudest moments are generally saved for the track.
“I’m the vocal guy; everybody knows I love to talk,” said senior Josh Wise, the defending WPIAL Class AA champion in the high jump. “But when push comes to shove, everybody needs a boost, and you watch Quorteze run, you watch that 4×800 run, he really gets everybody going.
“He doesn’t even have to say much. When you see him run and you see how hard he runs and the passion he runs with, it really sets everybody off.”
Levy doesn’t mind.
It’s the role he watched Fuller play, the same one he couldn’t wait to step into as a junior, stench and all.
“I knew coming into the season that people had to step up. Big shoes had to be filled,” Levy said. “With Dustin gone, I knew I had to fill his shoes. I was just motivated. Ever since last season, I knew what I had to do.”