Nashua's Kobe Perry beams alongside his coach, Salena Abdur-Rashed after earning All-American status with his performance at the AAU Championships recently at Virginia Beach. (Courtesy photo)

NASHUA – He was announced “In Lane Four, Kobe Perry, U.S. No. 9.”

Reggie Perry was shocked, when at the AAU Track and Field Nationals earlier this month at the Virginia Beach Convention Center, his 13-year-old son Kobe of Nashua was introduced prior to the first heat in the 60 meter as the ninth fastest sprinter in the U.S.for his age group.

But Kobe Perry, a seventh grader at Elm Street Junior High, took it several spots better, finishing second overall in the 60 meters to earn the silver medal with a time of 8.4 seconds. That finish also gives him All-American status.

“When the race finished and he placed second, that nine ranking went to No. 2, and that’s how he’ll finish the year, U.S. No. 2,” said Reggie Perry, the founder of the non-profit youth/fitness oriented organization P.U.S.H. “But I had heard that (No. 9) for the first time.”

Never before did they have the top 20 sprinters in the country in every heat.

But speed can be a wonderful thing.

Just ask the seventh grader’s coaches who are working with him. Perry was competing as a member of the Metro Cobras Track Club out of Boston/Brookline, Mass.

It was his only event for the indoor season due to the pandemic, as the northeast had no indoor meets. Besides his success in the 60 meters, Perry also earned All-American status in the high jump, in which he was fourth. He also finished 10th in the 200 meters.

“He is transitioning into being a very good athlete,” his Cobras coach, Saleena Abdur-Rashed said. “This was his first meet since this time last season and being quarantined made him work hard.

“The pandemic, in a way, actually helped him. He was able to focus more, and in a way that helped him vs.the other kids.”

During the last year, Perry worked out often in a soccer facility in Newton, Mass., plus did some speed workouts with PUSH coach D.J. Brock in the area. Brock is also a track and field coach at Acton-Boxborough High School.

This wasn’t Kobe Perry’s first rodeo, so to speak. In the non-pandemic past he’s competed in several big USATF meets and AAU Club Championships in in other parts of the country.

“But this by far was a very big one,” Reggie Perry said. “You had kids flying in from California, kids coming in from Arizona, kids driving up from Georgia.

“This was a monumentally big meet.”

Perry’s father says his favorte events may be the 200 meters, “with the 60 creeping up, but he’s really, really fast out of the blocks in the 200.”

In the outdoor season, Perry will likely run the 100, 200 and a 4×100 relay if relays are allowed (due to COVID) for the Metro Cobras. They are planning to go to the AAU Club championships in Orlando, Fla., plus a big relay meet in Georgia.

But Perry’s focus, Andur-Raahed said, is the key, and it’s what can separate him from the other athletes.

“Of the athletes I train, I know Kobe,” she said. “He’s one of those kids that if you tell him to do something, he’s going to do it.”

That’s because Kobe Perry has lofty goals, according to his father, including wanting to play college football.

“The coach in me, in all honesty, by the time Kobe is a senior in high school, he’ll be in my opinion the second if not top sought after sprinter/football player in the state of New Hampshire,” Reggie Perry said. “He’s on that type of trajectory.”

And that’s a trajectory that’s all about speed, so you better not blink, you may miss Kobe Perry’s success.

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