Shue Makes His Big Move

Everything changed for Tyler Shue in the 800-meter run at the Lancaster-Lebanon League Championships last year.

As a wiry Ephrata freshman, Shue fought to stay at the front of the senior-laden field, pushing the pace against the likes of McCaskey’s Nathan Henderson and Lebanon’s Derin Klick as they barreled toward the end of their high school careers.

Step-for-step with Henderson in the race’s final 100 meters in a torrid race for second place, Shue’s legs locked up with the Mc-Caskey senior’s stride and gave out with about 25 meters to go.

Shue stumbled and fell, settling for 15th place at 2:03.60.

But that fall near the finish line sparked Shue’s state-caliber rise as a sophomore.

“I went all out in that race,” Shue said. “I physically died with, like 10-15 meters left. Ever since then, I’ve just been training harder and putting in more effort on and off the track with diet and sleep schedules and stuff that help me perform better.”

The effort paid off for Shue, who enters his sophomore league championship meet — scheduled for today and Saturday at Hempfield — as the No. 2 seed in the 800-meter run, as well as a member of the Mountaineers’ top-seeded and defending-champion 4x800-meter relay team.

His shot across the middle-distance bow as a freshman also sparked his transformation from talented part-time track athlete to one of Pennsylvania’s most promising runners.

“When he ran up against two state medalists,” Ephrata distance coach Mike DelPiano said, “and just went toe to toe with them, I think that that changed his whole outlook on the sport.”

Sophomore emergence

After finishing 15th in the L-L League’s 800-meter run, Shue finished ninth at last year’s District Three meet as the only freshman in the Class 3A race and helped the Mountaineers qualify for states in the 4x800-meter relay.

The Ephrata distance crew continued the momentum during the indoor season over this past winter, as Shue, Tanyon Loose, AJ Morales and Andrew Foster finished second at the indoor state championships.

Shue ran a split time in the low 1:50s and came back with a kick to finish second in the individual 800-meter indoor state championship race at 1:53.85.

“His work ethic was mediocre at best last year,” DelPiano said of Shue, “but coming into the winter, he was totally focused and dialed in. He put in the work this winter, which brought him from where he was to now being an elite runner in our state.”

Great spring

Outdoors this spring, Shue has sprinkled standout times into his sophomore campaign. He ran a hand-held 400-meter time of 50.7 seconds in an April 23 dual meet against Manheim Central. Nine days earlier, he ran a time of 4:22.16 to win the 1,600-meter run at the Black Knight Invitational at Hempfield.

Despite success in the other races, Shue has savored his success in the 800-meter run. He won the Class 3A 800-meter race at the Shippensburg Invitational, in a school-record time of 1:55.17, against a field that included district qualifiers in Carlisle’s Jack Wisner and Cedar Cliff’s Jack Baker.

“I hadn’t run a quick 800 leading up to that,” he said, “so I wasn’t sure what I was capable of at that point. I went out there and put down a 1:55, and it really showed that I was ready for the season.”

The race set him up as the No. 2 seed at this weekend’s league championships. Warwick junior Connor Shields earned the top seed with a time of 1:55.03.

Relay excellence

While the bold run in last year’s league championships sparked his transformation as a runner, Shue also found inspiration in his distance teammates, including Zach Lefever, the Pitt freshman who anchored last year’s 4x800-meter relay team.

“He’s the greatest distance runner in our school’s history,” Shue said of Lefever, the Mountaineers’ 3,200-meter run record- holder. “Running with him was huge for me. And watching him run at the state meet in the 3,200, it really showed that it really does work when you give 100 percent 100 percent of the time.”

The current iteration of Ephrata’s 4x800 team — primarily Shue, Loose, Morales and Foster — won races in all seven of the Mountaineers’ dual meets. It also collected a win at the Shippensburg Invitational, authored a meet-record run at the Black Knight Invitational and qualified for the Championship of America at the Penn Relays, a race that saw the team’s season-best time (7:52.72) that included Shue’s split time of 1:52.55, one of the fastest 800 meters in L-L League history.

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