Albemarle quartet enjoying national attention after 4x800 record

It was just six weeks ago that Zach Vrhovac, Luke Noble, Garrett Bradley and Anthony Kostelac burst onto the international track scene by breaking the world junior indoor record for the 4x800 meter relay at the Boston Indoor Championship.

On Saturday, in front of a crowd of 47,904 screaming track fans in Philadelphia at the Penn Relays, the foursome did the impossible once again by breaking the outdoor record in the 4x800 with a sizzling time of 7:30.67 — a full two seconds ahead of the previous U.S. record.

“I feel like I’ve had some talented kids,” said Albemarle track and field coach Lance Weisend. “But to have these four, it’s just amazing. There are coaches who’ve been around for 40 years and never had a 4x800 like this. They each bring something to the group. The way they compliment each other is just amazing.”

All four runners ran their legs of the relay in at least 1:55 with Kostelac, the anchor ripping off a personal best 1:49.

Having run this race a number of times with no competitor within sight, the Albemarle high schoolers had their hands full with runners from Morris Hill High School in New Jersey and the Jamaica College team.

“We needed competition,” Weisend said. “They really came after us and our guys just responded. And it was just amazing to have the crowd engaged it. It was overwhelming. These are just really special kids that just put it on the line every week.”

Kostelac started the final segment of the race in second place, forcing him to dig deep to oust the competition rather than take a victory lap as has been the case in prior events.

“I don’t think there was anything left in any of them by the time the race was over,” Weisend said. “I don’t think that was true at indoor nationals, we were just so far ahead.”

The new record holders ran in front of the sixth largest crowd ever on a Saturday at the Penn Relays.

“To be in a venue that holds 50,000 people, to have people screaming and yelling chants of, ‘U-S-A,’ it was pretty spectacular,” Weisend said.

After breaking the indoor record, the quartet wanted to legitimize their stranglehold as the best high school 4x800 runners.

“A lot of programs don’t have indoor teams,” Weisend said. “But outdoor records — that includes everybody.”

Now with their ownership of both the indoor and outdoor records, the Albemarle students become celebrities of the track community.

“It’s been weird,” Weisend said. “They’ll go out to eat and someone will walk by them and go, ‘Hey, that’s the Albemarle 4x800 team.’ It’s really overwhelming because that kind of thing doesn’t usually happen in our sport.”