Red-shirt senior Zye Boey is already one of the fastest track and field athletes in Eastern history. The Decatur native has accomplished more in his four year career at Eastern than some track and field athletes will in a lifetime. So what’s next for Boey? Run even faster.

“I accept the victory, of course, but just the time I ran, I actually wanted to go a little bit faster,” Boey said after the Notre Dame Meyo Invite, where he won the men’s 200-meter dash with a time of 21.12 seconds.

Boey is no stranger to success at the Notre Dame Meyo Invite. At last year’s event, he, again, won the men’s 200-meter dash, but it was just a tad faster. Boey’s 20.89 second time was the fastest indoor 200-meter dash time in Eastern history. History wasn’t made this year, but Boey still picked up his fourth win of the season in the event.

For the past two weeks, Boey’s competition has been anything but chump change. In just the past two weeks, Boey has taken on competition from major conference schools such as Indiana, Michigan State, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Purdue and Kentucky, and he’s beaten them all.

Boey’s performance hasn’t gone unnoticed either. Along with being the No. 7 200-meter runner in the nation, Boey has been the Ohio Valley Conference Male Track Athlete of the Week for the past three weeks.

Despite the recognition in the OVC, Boey wants more recognition for Eastern, who he says is still overlooked by the major conference schools.

“Teams don’t give us much respect because we’re Eastern Illinois,” he said. “Week in and week out we show everybody else that we’re Eastern Illinois. Just because we’re a small school, doesn’t mean we can’t compete with the best.”

Boey says with the amount of nationally ranked athletes the team has each year, the team deserves respect.

“It’s funny how everybody looks down on us, but we’ve got five or six guys ranked in the top twenty five in the nation, every year, year in and year out,” he said. “I hope they start to realize that, ‘Hey, Eastern Illinois can battle with the best teams in the nation. We come ready to compete against anybody.”

Boey will try and return to another familiar place later on this season, the NCAA Indoor championships. To qualify, he must clock a time 20.73 seconds. He will get another chance this weekend when the Panthers compete at the Grand Valley State Invitational.

Dominic Renzetti can be reached at 581-7942 or [email protected].