Track and field: Tucson teen Cristiano Morales leads big local contingent to Junior Olympic Nationals in Texas

Cristiano Morales went against the grain, and it’s paying off.

Soccer was the first sport that grabbed his attention. He comes from a family, after all, where just about everyone watches and plays the sport.

But the now-16-year old forged his own path. It was on the track where he realized he likes the adrenaline from running fast, competing against others and passing them on his way to the finish line.

Last weekend, in both the 400 meters and 200 meters, he ran arguably faster then he ever had before. Morales took first place in the 400 with a personal best of 48.58 seconds at the USATF Region 10 Junior Olympics Track and Field Championships in Aurora, Colorado. He also finished fourth in the 200, after he clocked a personal best in that event of 21.91 seconds during the prelims.

Both were times Morales, who will be a junior at Salpointe Catholic High School this fall, wanted to hit since he was a freshman. But it was all a matter of “showing these people who you are and the times you can produce,” he said.

“I was really, really happy (with my finish in the 400 meters),” Morales said. “In the video, you see me throw my hands up in the air when I cross the line because in prelims, I hit 50 (seconds), and I really wasn’t happy about that. I was just trying to qualify. Waiting for the 400 final, my friends were like, ‘Oh, you’re going to hit 48 like, you got this.’

“Once I got to the (start), everything was quiet. I was like, ‘OK, you just have to go. You have to attack your race pace, just attack everything.’ And I did that. When I crossed that line, the announcer was counting down from 46 so it was like 46, 47 and then I crossed at 48 (seconds). That was the happiest day of my life.”

Both performances qualified Morales for this week’s USATF National Junior Olympic Track & Field Championships in College Station, Texas. Morales competes in the 200 meters on Tuesday at 3:30 p.m. Arizona time (5:30 central, on site in Texas); on Wednesday, he runs the 400 meters also at 3:30 p.m. Arizona time (5:30 in Texas). Both are streamed on the USATF.TV subscription service.

Morales has been training with Tucson’s Elite Athletic Club for three years. The club is run by the Harveys — Fred, the University of Arizona’s longtime track and field coach and his wife Janet, a former elite hurdler and long jumper and the boys track coach at Tucson High School.

Fred Harvey calls Morales the “glue” of the club. Everyone likes him. This was evident when he crossed the 48-second mark and his teammates, his “friends,” mobbed him.

Morales also runs track at Salpointe and was part of the teams that won back-to-back D-III state championships. This year, he was part of a first-place team in the 4x800-meter relay and second in the 4x400 relay while finishing fourth individually in the 400 meters.

Year to year, Morales’ improvement is clear. But over the last few months his times have gone down in both races dramatically. In March at the Willie Williams Classic at Drachman Stadium, Morales ran the 400 in 53.24 seconds. A week later at the Lancer Invitational, he reportedly ran the 200 in 23.87 seconds.

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“It’s definitely not normal, right?” Fred Harvey said. “We all know he has talent and he’s starting to mature. But I think the biggest thing is that he’s trusting himself and he’s trusting the process in which we’re putting forward for him.”

Morales added that the strength conditioning he has started to do, along with the tougher training sessions have helped him a lot. Then, there a little something else.

“It’s just the confidence that they (Fred and Janet Harvey) gave me because they are saying ‘You can do this,’” Morales said. “(They) believed in me a lot.”

Throughout the years — 26 years to be exact — the Harveys have believed in a lot of Tucson youths. Their club has been in existence since 1992 but really started focusing on youth development in 1998.

Quite a number of soon-to-be elite athletes have come through this program, including the likes of three who competed for the Wildcats during their college careers: Trayvion White-Austin (Sahuaro High School, then the UA), along with Neysia Howard (Tucson High, then the UA before transferring to Grand Canyon) and Johnnie Blockburger (Tucson High, then the UA before transferring to USC).

White-Austin holds Arizona’s men’s 100-meter mark (10.17 seconds); Howard, who is in the UA records books for the women’s 100 and 200, claimed the WAC’s indoor track athlete of year in 2024 for GCU; and Blockburger, the Pac-12’s track athlete of the year this season at USC, won over and over again, including nine league titles across events like the men’s individual 200 and 400 and 4x100 and 4x400 relays).

Just as with his Wildcat athletes, Fred Harvey develops plans for each individual. After the middle school or high school seasons are completed, the Harveys assess where these athletes are in terms of what their bodies feel like. They design the programs from that point, giving the athletes a chance to recover before starting the process to peak in the lead up to the Junior Olympic Nationals.

This approach takes a lot into account including their age and what event they run. This means for the younger ones there isn’t crazy training like running stairs or hills. For others, like Morales, it means looking at their body type.

“Your body and your genetic makeup tells you what it is you’re going to do,” Fred Harvey said. “He was born and designed to do what he’s doing. Maybe at one stage in his life, as he goes through more maturity, his body says, ‘this guy’s an 800 meter runner.’ But we’re so young into the game right now.

“He has short sprinter leg speed. He has the ability and endurance to be able to prolong that speed over a long period of time.”

Now, Morales is focused on his next goal of becoming an All-American this week. That means finishing in the top eight in either of his events.

“I’ve told myself, ‘I’m going to get that one year. I am going to be the one to get an All-American hat, a medal and a badge,’” Morales said. “I know I’m going to be happy coming out of nationals if I can get that, but if I don’t, I know I’ll be happy if I can get a good time.”