Boys 100-meter runners Tymir Johnson, from left, Alex Guthrie, and Daniel Greer walk after the race at the 2024 DODEA European Championships at Kaiserslautern High School in Kaiserslautern, Germany, on May 24, 2024. Guthrie won with a time of 10.92 seconds. (Alexander Riedel/Stars and Stripes)

Chris Jackson watched one Stuttgart Eagles basketball game and noticed then-sixth-grader Alex Guthrie’s athletic talent.

Now the boys basketball and athletic director at Stuttgart High School, he didn’t waste any time letting others know his opinion of Guthrie.

“I walked up and told his father, ‘This is the most athletic kid I’ve ever seen at Stuttgart,’” Jackson said. “Even then, his ability to get up the floor and his ability to jump were crazy. I could see then this guy is special when it comes to his athleticism.”

Still, Guthrie didn’t step on the track until his freshman year. It came at the urging of Jackson following his first year on the Panther basketball squad.

From there, the 2024 Stars and Stripes European boys track and field Athlete of the Year was hooked.

“I was like, ‘OK, I’ll give it a shot. I’ll try it for one year. If I don’t like it, I won’t do it,’” Guthrie said. “It ended up being my passion. It’s fun to me.”

That fun has translated to success on the tracks of DODEA-Europe the past two seasons in sprinting and jumping events.

Despite zero experience heading into his freshman campaign, Guthrie qualified for the 100-meter dash and eventually competed in the 100, long jump and the high jump last spring.

He followed that up this year by taking the gold medal in the 100, 200 and long jump at Kaiserslautern High School on May 23-24. Guthrie fell one event short from a perfect meet when the Stuttgart 4x100 relay team was disqualified in the preliminaries.

The leap from novice to the best in Europe doesn’t shock anyone who knows him. In fact, they see this as just the tip of the iceberg.

“Alex is an athlete that is still learning his body,” Stuttgart track coach Ian Wingfield said. “His potential and ceiling is extremely high. I don’t believe we’ve actually seen him even kind of scrape the surface.”

In fact, Guthrie’s losses at the final meet in 2023 helped spur his electric second season.

The 6-foot-3 sprinter and jumper made the podium in all three European races as a freshman. Guthrie took runner-up in both the 100 behind Kaiserslautern’s Brelan Barnes by 0.02 seconds and the long jump. He placed fifth in the high jump.

Heading into his sophomore season, Guthrie watched videos of sprinting legends Usain Bolt and American Olympic bronze medalist Noah Lyles, as well as those of the world’s best jumpers, to improve his form in all events.

Stuttgart’s Alex Guthrie surges over the finish line to win the boys 200 meter finals, followed closely by teammate Daniel Greer, at the 2024 DODEA European Championships at Kaiserslautern High School in Kaiserslautern, Germany, on May 24, 2024. Both athletes achieved personal records, with Guthrie at 22.54 seconds and Greer at 23.03 seconds. (Alexander Riedel/Stars and Stripes)

The results were impressive. Guthrie dropped 0.35 seconds in the 100 from the 11.19 at the 2023 European meet to 10.84 at a home meet on April 27. He ended up running a 10.92 for a winning time at the 2024 Euros, 0.2 seconds ahead of Barnes.

Then, in the 200, Guthrie dropped 0.8 seconds from his ninth-seeded time heading into the Euros to win with a 22.54 race, nearly half a second ahead of teammate Daniel Greer.

In the long jump, the Stuttgart sophomore beat out another teammate, Tyshawn Rusu, to win with a leap of 21 feet, 4.5 inches.

“I was like, ‘Look, next year is my last year here at Stuttgart. I don’t like losing anymore. I don’t want to do it,’” Guthrie said. “Give me someone faster than me, and I will not stop until I’m with them.”

Those improvements didn’t come without adversity.

At Ansbach on April 6, Guthrie’s quad knotted up so bad Wingfield and the Stuttgart coaching staff were worried it was going to end up as a strain. So, they kept Guthrie from competing for four weeks.

Also, Guthrie worked on his block starts, according to Wingfield, and for most of the campaign, it helped him drop his times. Yet at the European meet, Guthrie slipped coming out of the blocks in the 100.

For his coach, that made his sub-11 performance in Kaiserslautern even more noteworthy.

“One of the first things I said to Alex when we met was that he was going sub-11,” Wingfield said. “We literally see it every day, and it’s not necessarily in the sense of being cocky. We just knew he was going to do it.”

Unfortunately for the Panthers, Guthrie is moving back to the Washington, D.C., area.

He said he will look at his time in Stuttgart fondly, after moving from Bowie, Md., in the third grade.

“It played an important role in my life because if I was still in the States right now, I don’t even know what I’d be doing, to be honest,” Guthrie said.