Be it track or football, the show is just beginning for Thomas Tyner

When Thomas Tyner exploded out of the blocks at the Aloha Relays on April 16, he wasn't expecting to run the fastest 100 meters in an Oregon high school track and field race. He had tightness in his hamstring earlier in the week and was just aiming for a good overall race.

But 10.43 seconds later, his name was in the record books. Tyner wasn't pushed, either, as the runnerup in the 100 was timed at 11.4 - some 10 meters behind.

Tyner's 10.43 erased the previous mark held by McKay of Salem's Ryan Bailey, who ran 10.48 in 2007.

"I was quite surprised and really wasn't expecting it," said Tyner, a sophomore at Aloha (Beaverton, Ore.), just west of Portland. "I had a little hamstring tightness, so I was just hoping to go under 11 seconds and win the race."

He was, however, expecting to break the state sprint record within the next six weeks. That was his preseason goal.

"My goal is to win the 100 for the next three years and for this year to get down to 10.3," said Tyner, also the first sophomore to be honored as Oregon's Large School Football Player of the Year after leading Aloha to the 6A state title.

Though Tyner was surprised by his 10.43, few others were. Tyner has already run 10.57 and 10.53 this spring and the Oregon prep season is less than four weeks old.

Before the start of his sophomore season, Tyner had run under 11 seconds 17 times. This year, he has run under 11 in all five races. Those feats are more impressive when considering the northwest's windy and wet weather.

The 6-0, 205-pound Tyner has big goals and many of them.

"I'd like to go under 21 for the 200 meters," said Tyner, who last lost at the state 6A meet to Barlow of Gresham's Arthur Delaney.

Delaney has wind-legal bests of 10.59 and 21.28. More importantly, he is back-to-back state champ in the 100 and has signed to run track at the University of Oregon.

"I want to beat Delaney," said Tyner, who ran 10.54 at the state meet as a freshman. "He's the only person to beat me. He also beat me in the 200, by a hair."

Tyner's best in the 200 is 21.63, also as a freshman.

Delaney's winning time at state was 10.42, but according to USTAF officials, measurable wind was more than the 2 meters per second (mps) for record purposes. Tyner's record-setting time was a legal 0.9 mps when he surpassed Bailey.

In addition to his goals of winning three state titles in the spring, Tyner wants to anchor Aloha's 4x100 relay team to a trio of titles as well. In 2011, they have the state's best time at 41.9.

"We've been working hard. We've been doing a lot of distance sprint work from 100 up to 600, then back down," said Tyner.

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