After starting his prep career competing in baseball and football, Kraemer has shifted focus to running 400 and 800 meters for Bruins, who are expected to have significant presence April 19-20 at annual event at Hayward Field

By Pete Marshall for DyeStat

Only a couple of years ago, J.T. Kraemer dreamt of being the next Keenan Allen in football or the next Mike Trout in baseball.

Now, he wants to be the next Will Sumner.

Kraemer, a senior at Long Beach Wilson High in California, took a circuitous route, but now has a bright future running primarily the 400 and 800 meters for the Bruins’ track and field team.

He will be running April 19-20 at the Oregon Relays, competing in the 4x400-meter relay Friday night and Saturday in the open 800 meters.

Kraemer is coming off his first weekend without competition in months and is eager for the Oregon Relays Presented by AthleticNET, which will include an 800 with his toughest competition this season.

“I’m getting so excited to see what (time) I can put up,” Kraemer said. “I split a 1:51.1 (for 800 meters in a relay) at the Texas Relays, so I‘d like to go a low 1:51 or a sub-1:51.” 

Before high school, Kraemer tried many sports: football, baseball, basketball, lacrosse and soccer.

“My main sport was baseball,” Kraemer said. “I was going to focus on tackle football and baseball (in high school).”

He played baseball and football his freshman and sophomore years, then played football his junior year in the fall of 2022.

Kraemer’s football statistics that season weren’t overwhelming.

After catching 10 passes for 87 yards and a touchdown as a sophomore, he broke his ankle before his junior season and only returned at the season’s end, catching five passes for 92 yards and a touchdown. Yet, he was committed to getting better at football, so that spring decided to try track instead of baseball, so he would get faster for football. This, in spite of the fact he expected to be a starting outfielder.

It was a fateful decision that impacted his athletic career, but not in the way he expected.

“I played not as much (football junior year) as I wanted to,” Kraemer said. “My thought process was to go in and quit baseball. For the spring season run track and get faster for football.

“If someone had told me a couple of years ago I’d be a track athlete, I’d be so confused. I played a lot of sports, but track was never an option.”

He thought he would be a sprinter for track, but his coaches had other ideas, to run the 800 and 1,600 meters. Eventually, he settled on the 400 and 800.

“The practices themselves were hard, and not enjoyable,” Kraemer said. “But it was fun to run with the guys. I didn’t know a lot of guys on the track team. And success is fun.”

He found that success fairly quickly. He finished second at CIF Southern Section Division 1 finals in the 400 in 48.15 seconds, advanced to state after taking fifth at the CIF-Southern Section Masters meet and ran the anchor leg on Wilson’s section championship 4x400 relay.

Kraemer did not make the Division 1 finals in the 800, running 1:56.60 at the division prelims, but did run the anchor leg on Wilson’s 4x800 relay team that took fifth in the state.

WIlson’s co-head coach Neil Nelson saw Kraemer’s improvement.

“We had workout groups,” Nelson said. “When we started out, he was in the fourth group. Then he moved up to the third group and he kept getting better.”

Nelson said Kraemer’s intelligence helped a rapid improvement. Kraemer has earned straight As in high school and chose to run track at Harvard, over Duke, Michigan, Notre Dame and Penn.

“He’s a smart kid, that’s the key,” Nelson said. “He understood our instructions of what to do. We tell our kids track is 99 percent mental. He goes home and analyzes his races. That’s a big part of our program.”

Kraemer also learned to appreciate a sport where he can see his hard work translate into results in the form of better and better times.

Kraemer said there was a moment when it clicked for him.

“I felt like there was a defining moment. It was this time last year at the Texas Relays,” Kraemer said. “I had been running 1:55s and 1:57s (in the 800) and I split a 47-mid in the 400.  That was the fastest I’d gone.”

It was near the end of the season when Kraemer made the call: he was a track athlete now.

“It was right before the state meet, he had already come to me and coach (Shannon Fisher),” Nelson said. “He said he doesn’t think he’s playing football next year. He came and told us, ‘I’m not going to get anything in football.’ He informed the football coaches and they understood.”

Being so new to the sport, Nelson thinks Kraemer has room this season to run even faster, especially in the 800.

“He has the speed, strength and the smarts, he wants to run professionally. He’s not thinking just academics,” Nelson said. “I see him going 1:46, maybe even faster, eventually (in the 800). His senior year, I could see him going sub-1:50. He’s just going to continue to get better.”

To say Kraemer is now a one-sport athlete is not completely true.

Kraemer enjoys reading, playing piano and is president of the Lego Club at school. And in a recent dodgeball competition at Wilson, the Lego Club won.

So, has Kraemer found yet another sport?

As good as he is at running track, that seems unlikely.