Sensational Shamali adds one more record to Nottingham lure
Georgia commit sets new Group II mark in 200
FRANKLIN TWP. » You always know when Shamali Whittle is about to race.
There’s a buzz around the track when the Nottingham High senior sets himself in the starting blocks. It’s not limited to his Northstar teammates as anyone who was at the Group II and IV Meet at Franklin High this weekend can attest.
As Whittle was lining up for the 100 meter dash — his penultimate race in a Nottingham kit — a group of athletes from another school said it best: “It’s Whittle! It’s Whittle!” they said to each other.
“It’s so different from my freshman year when I was looking up to the big guys,” Whittle said. “We all watched them run and now before the race guys come up to me and ask me questions. Sometimes I sit back like this is crazy. Guys just want to talk to me and I don’t think about myself like that.”
The sensational Whittle made sure to deliver in his final race on Saturday when he won the Group II championship in the 200 meters by setting a new meet record with a time of 21.17. Whittle broke the previous mark of 21.35 set in 2019 by South Plainfield’s Daniel Duncan.
What made it even more impressive was that Whittle is battling an achy left hip flexor that he injured two weeks at the Mercer County Meet.
“We were deciding right before
the race whether to pull him or not and he said, ‘Coach, I’m going to try,’” said his head coach and father Curtis Whittle. “Even when he was walking off we were thinking if we should pull him and we let him go and he delivered.”
Deliver is what Whittle has done since he first stepped on the track as a youngster. He burst on the scene at Nottingham as a freshman running with the top 4×100 relay in the state and barely missed a beat despite the season lost because of the coronavirus pandemic when he secured the 100 and 200 double at the Meet of Champions his junior season.
There won’t be a MoC this go round for Whittle since he, like many other stars in New Jersey, is heading for the New Balance High School Nationals next Saturday at Franklin Field in Philadelphia.
“It was very tough because I want a national championship,
but it’s (also) the state meet, my last state meet,” said Whittle, a University of Georgia commit. “It would have been nice to go out on top at the state meet because there is nothing like that. Everyone in New Jersey is there and comes out at one time.”
That, however, doesn’t diminish his legacy on high school track in the Garden State.
“He’s fierce,” Nottingham assistant Bernice Mitchell said. “To see him blossom, I’m holding back tears. This will be his final high school meet and I said to him go out there and do it for you.”
Mitchell knows a little something about greatness, too. She’s a mentor to Trenton’s two-time Olympic champion Athing Mu, so when asked what Whittle’s ceiling she didn’t hesitate.
“The next Olympian that comes from New Jersey,” she
said, “his name is Shamali Whittle.”
Seems like a lot of pressure, no?
“I want to be the greatest track athlete to ever come out of New Jersey,” Whittle said. “That’s what I’m working to be. Hopefully, I’ll be up in that discussion when I leave.”
His father says the best is yet to come.
“He’s an untapped potential,” Curtis Whittle said. “As a dad, you can’t push him too much. You know what he needs, but you can’t coach him up as much because then you can have a rift. You want to give him just enough for when he goes to college.”
Whittle is headed to Georgia in the fall where he will join a team that just finished fifth at the NCAA Outdoor Championships.
As for dad?
“No coaching,” Curtis said, “I’ll be cheering.”