“It comes with good, old hard work,” says Steven Parker, who along with Michael Hammerquist, coaches the throwers for the 3M Track Club. “[Brandon] stays an extra 30 minutes after practice ends. He’s out there after everybody else has gone home.”

Brandon, an El Sobrante resident who competes as a second-year midget for 3M, set a Region 14 mini-javelin age group record of 143 feet 7 inches in 2005. “It feels great,” Brandon says of his accomplishment at the Region 14 championships in Union City. “They had to look at the mark, and they said it was a record and announced it to the crowd.”

The record was as of January 2006, but Brandon has thrown farther since then.

He also set a Region 14 mini-javelin record of 119 feet 2 inches in 2004 when he was a bantam.

More recently, Brandon won the mini-javelin, shot put and discus at the Junior Olympics Championships, June 24 and 25, in Livermore.

“I was happy, but then again, I have to work on throwing farther,” Brandon says. This year, Brandon is approaching the national mini-javelin record of 165 feet 11 inches. He currently is ranked No. 1 nationally in the midget boys’ mini-javelin with 159 feet 1.5 inches. He also is first in the discus with 118 feet and fifth in the shot put with 42 feet 8 inches, Parker says.

Brandon is in good company. Of the eight throwers on the 3M team, five are ranked in the top eight nationally, Parker says.

Both he and Brandon have their eyes set on another Junior Olympic berth.

At the 2005 Junior Olympics in Indianapolis, Brandon placed seventh in the shot put, second in the discus with a throw of 106 feet 2 inches and third in the mini-javelin with 140 feet 10 inches.

While Brandon says going to the Junior Olympics was exciting, he also felt nervous because of so many other good athletes.

The soon-to-be-sixth grader excels off the field, too. He was named student of the year when he was in fourth grade at Murphy Elementary in El Sobrante.

Balancing sports and school can be a challenge, says Brandon’s father, Tracy. Brandon gets out of school about 2:30 p.m. and does homework until practice, which runs from 5:30 until about 7:30 p.m. Then it’s back home to eat, finish homework and go to sleep.

“Sometimes I have to give things up for track,” Brandon says.

But Tracy says Brandon realizes that he may not always have sports, and he has to have a good education on which to fall back. The 11-year-old already talks about attending college.

Track also has taught Brandon how to cope with everyday events.

“I’ve learned from track if I was having a bad day, I would just use a technique and try to toss it out,” he says.

If you know a Pacific Association USA Track and Field youth athlete you'd like to see profiled, contact Vicky Boyd at (209) 571-0419 or [email protected].