LAKEWOOD >> Longmont senior Teagan Malcom didn’t hide his disappointment in the immediate wake of his Class 4A 300-meter hurdle state championship performance at Jeffco Stadium on Saturday.

The legacy he’ll leave behind for the Trojans, however, will last far longer than the 36.94 seconds he ran to crown himself once again in the event. He was just hoping to break the 4A state meet record of 36.81 seconds that Wasson High School’s Trevor Brown set in 2010.

He was still happy to defend the state title that he first earned last year with a 38.38-second mark.

“It’s definitely an amazing feeling,” Malcom said. “I really wanted the record, but I had a great season. I can’t complain about that. I was .02 away in the prelims yesterday, and today I had a lot more events on my legs, so I wasn’t as close. I ran what the state meet record was last week, but you have to run it here for it to count for the state meet.”

He chose to put the team above his own aspirations and even threw a new event — the 400-meter dash — into his already hefty arsenal to help the Trojans in the team race.

Earlier in the day, he secured silver in the 110 hurdles, his time of 14.08 slightly behind Grand Junction’s Mason Znamenacek. He then claimed third in the 400 at 48.85.

His head coach, Scott Dickinson, lauded his selfless decision, even if it left him worn out by the time his 300 hurdles race rolled around in the afternoon.

“Teagan’s a leader just with practices, workouts, mentality,” Dickinson said. “When he communicates with his teammates, people listen to him, people follow him. He just does all the little things right in training, recovery and eating, and all the little things that it takes to be a great athlete. Teagan does that and has shown a lot of his teammates how to also train and prepare the right way.”

Malcom will head to CU next year to continue his career and is already planning to compete in the 400 hurdles and 110 hurdles for the Buffaloes. He said that it will be “bittersweet” to say goodbye to the teammates and coaches that have shaped the runner he is today, but Dickinson knows his hometown influence will last far longer than the four years he spent within the Longmont High walls.

“We’re going to have his picture hung up in our gym lobby with all the other state champions that we’ve had,” Dickinson said. “He’s the first one (in my nine-year tenure) that’s going to say, ‘Back-to-back state champion.’ People are going to look at that and say, ‘That’s the kid. I want to be like him. I want to be like Teagan.’ And then I can tell them how Teagan trained. I can tell them he is a team-first kid in the decision that he made, and future athletes are going to say, ‘OK, he’s a team-first guy. I’m going to be a team guy.’”