Lisbon’s Baylor Speidel is healthy again, and ready for one more dash of glory

LISBON — Baylor Speidel wishes the tale had a more heroic slant.

There was no mad dash out of a burning building. No diving save of a neighbor’s cat that had tumbled from a tree.

Speidel suffered a fractured fibula in his right leg last fall during football season. He could have left it at that.

But there’s more to the story.

“Well, it didn’t exactly happen in a football game,” he said, somewhat sheepishly.

It was Week 6, homecoming week at Lisbon High School. One of the pep-rally activities was a game of Musical Chairs.

“We were down to the last two, Gage (Holub) and me,” Speidel said.

The music stopped. Speidel and Holub collided.

Speidel was in pain, but underestimated the extent of the injury. He played that Friday night, rushing seven times for 74 yards and two touchdowns in the Lions’ 68-0 rout of Wapello.

The pain persisted, then worsened the next week at practice.

“We laughed about it at first,” said Lonnie Speidel, Baylor’s father and track coach. “Once we saw the X-ray, we weren’t laughing any more.”

The right fibula was shattered. Speidel’s football season was over.

Surgery was recommended, but “I knew it would lengthen my recovery time,” Speidel said.

“We put it in a boot, and I took a lot of calcium supplements.”

In the six months since, Speidel has “healed up nicely,” according to his father.

“He was really patient. He took his nutrition and his supplements seriously. He wasn’t going to push himself too hard, too early.”

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This weekend, Speidel will realize how far back he has come.

A Class 1A power, Lisbon will take a good share of boys’ events to the Drake Relays, which runs today through Saturday at Drake Stadium in Des Moines.

Speidel was the third-place finisher in the Drake 100-meter dash last year. He returns in that event (he is seeded 13th with a season best of 10.83 seconds), as well as the 400-meter relay (the Lions are ranked 30th, at 43.52 seconds).

“The finals (in the 100) are definitely a goal,” he said. “A white (championship) flag would be the ultimate.”

Speidel comes from speedy genetics. Both of his parents were track athletes. Lonnie was a long sprinter in Illinois, Keri (Koser) Speidel was a member of Iowa City West’s state champion shuttle hurdle relay team in 1999.

Baylor is 5-foot-9 and 170 pounds — “not this insane physical specimen,” he called himself. “But offseason work pays off, staying consistent.

“I’m picky about my diet, what I put in my body. No processed foods.”

Lonnie recalls an instance of some fatherly teasing when Baylor was 10 years old.

“I was giving him a hard time about his knobby knees,” he said. “Baylor said, ‘These knobby knees are going to win state someday.’”

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At Lisbon, Speidel had an opportunity to blossom. The Lions have won four 1A team titles since 2015, and their 2017 squad owns the small-school record for points in a state meet (89).

“We have a very determined set of individuals,” Baylor said. “Once you get a taste of winning, you want it to continue.”

The Lions returned to the top in 2023, scoring 60 points at the state meet and outscoring runner-up Columbus Community by eight.

Speidel overcame a false-start disqualification in the 200 meters, running on the Lions’ title quartet in the 400-meter relay. He was the runner-up in the 100 and the 800 relay.

“I had never DQ’d in a race before,” he said. “I felt we got held in the blocks, and for some reason I twitched. It happened.

“I felt an extreme amount of guilt. Thankfully, it didn’t come down to those points that we lost.”

Lonnie was in the Drake Stadium infield, getting ready to talk to a shot-putter, when it happened.

“We had a chance to talk afterward,” Lonnie said. “I said, ‘You still have plenty of events to go. I love you, and we still need you.’”

During practice Monday, Baylor wore a white Nike T-shirt of a tortoise, with the words “I AM SPEED.”

He talked about his post-Lisbon plans: “I was thinking Indian Hills (Community College) maybe, but that has kind of changed. I’m planning on Mount Mercy (University) now. But my dream is to compete for Iowa.”

He talked about another team title: “We want that points record, too,” he said.

But he understands that in a world of Musical Chairs mishaps and starting-blocks twitches, stuff sometimes happens.

“Nothing is ever promised,” he said.

Comments: jeff.linder@thegazette.com