Metamora’s Ray wins 2026 Clutch Sports Media Boys Track and Field Coach of the Year

Metamora boys track and field made the 2026 season one to remember by winning its first state title in program history. 

The Redbirds used a one-day-at-a-time mentality to unify talented sprinters, distance runners, relays and field athletes that all had a collective hand in winning the Class 2A state championship. Head coach Sheridan Ray has spent much of his life around Metamora’s program and he is Clutch Sports Media’s 2026 Boys Track and Field Coach of the Year after helming the Redbirds’ breakout season. 

Ray’s squad won more than a handful of meets, including the Chuck Danner Invite and Metamora ABC Meet on home turf. At state, the Redbirds accumulated 46 points on the strength of Zach Born’s state championship in the 800 meters and the state title-winning 4x200 relay of Jaiduan Cranford, Kylan McMillen, Brayden Cox and Zach Alwardt. Cranford (fourth in 100), McMillen (eighth in 200), Paul Reason (seventh in 110 hurdles), AJ Ioerger (sixth in discus, ninth in shot put) and Metamora’s 4x100 (fourth) and 4x400 (sixth) relays also boosted the team in the Class 2A State Finals. 

Ray also led Metamora to winning the Class 2A Galesburg Sectional against a strong field for its first sectional plaque since 2018, as well as the Mid-Illini Conference title. The Redbirds set conference meet records in the 4x100 (41.96) and 4x200 (1:28.56) and Cranford set new all-time best marks in the 100 (10.58) and 200 (21.80). Metamora had nine honorees on Clutch Sports Media’s 2026 Boys Track and Field All-Area team.

Ray has spent 14 years coaching and took over Metamora’s varsity team in 2023 after Chuck Danner retired and has coached various teams across several sports and schools in the Metamora area. He is currently the coach of Metamora’s boys soccer team as well. 

Hear more about Ray’s season and career in our interview with him below. Some answers have been minimally edited for clarity. 

What have you been able to reflect on in the days since the season has ended? 

“Saturday we win, and then Sunday I have like a day to kind of hang out and I coach boys soccer at the high school as well so that Monday, we had our soccer camp, so from 7 in the morning to noon every day for five days,” Ray said. “It would sneak into my mind every once in a while where I'd see a Facebook post and I'd be like ‘Holy cow, look at that’. It just keeps crowding back into my mind and it's really cool because we got a bunch of guys that are returning next year. Obviously Jaiduan [Cranford] is graduating, and then Kylan [McMillen] is graduating and Wilbert Eppenger is another guy who graduated and we're going to miss those guys, but then also on the flip side, it's like we were still deep.”

“We had a lot of depth, and Zach [Born] is coming back, our 4x800…most of those guys are coming back,” Ray added. “A bunch of our relays have a bunch of guys coming back, and it's not going to look exactly the same next year, but we're really excited about what next year's going to look like. My mind, like I said, was thinking, ‘Okay, so we've got this group of guys, which is slightly different than that group of guys, so what drills would work for them?’ So, yeah, the mind never turns off.”

In your mind, what made the team so special this year?

“I told the guys from the first day we've got a chance to do some awesome things and I kind of say that at the beginning of the season because I truly believe that at the beginning of every season, we've got opportunities to do some great things,” Ray said. “Metamora has got a pretty deep track history, and they've got just a strong foundation. Those guys I think all realize ‘We want to fight for a conference title this year, we want to fight for a sectional,’ but I knew that with Kylan coming in with Jaiduan, with Zach, with how good and how deep we were in other areas, I was like, ‘Guys, we have a chance to do something.’ 

“I would tell them it all the time and every meet, I would try and give them like another little thought in their head of, ‘When we get to this meet, we need to make sure that we are on time to our events, not doing this, not doing that, we're thinking about this’ so that meet by meet, they were basically building that championship mentality. Then when I would tell them, ‘Hey guys, this could happen in a meet, don't let it derail the rest of your meet’ or ‘Don't get too excited about it because you have more events’ and just kind of helping the guys get through that early on made me realize by the end, I kind of saw it from the beginning, but I didn't want to get too ahead of myself.”

What’s your coaching background? 

“I graduated college from Monmouth, I went and I ran track there and when I came out, I reached out to Chuck Danner, and I think I probably reached out to Steve Danner as well,” Ray said. “I was like, ‘Hey, guys, I just graduated and obviously I long jumped and triple jumped in college, would you guys be interested in having somebody come around and help out?’ So I helped out with long jump, triple jump for a couple seasons with the boys team. I was the grade school head coach at Metamora Grade School for two seasons, went back to the boys program as an assistant, went back to the grade school and then ended up making my way as the girls high school head coach.”

“I did that for five years and that was really awesome, because a lot of the guys that I still coach with, I had kind of brought them on when I was on the girls program. Five years down the road, we ended up being able to take over the boys program when Chuck Danner retired. Then the girls program had a bunch of the coaches that we all coached with, the boys program we had a couple of coaches move over so we kind of made a coaching conglomerate over the last couple of years, which is awesome, because a lot of us coach a lot of the different areas, so like, whether regardless of a boy or a girl.” 

“It’s a really exciting group of kids and we’re excited about the future of the kids that we have coming up as well,” Ray added. “Our grade schools had really, really good seasons this past year, so hopefully Kyle [Weyeneth] and I, over the next couple of seasons, we'll still kind of see this train rolling.”

What helps keep you motivated?

“I just finished my 14th year, bouncing around from the grade school and the high school back and forth,” Ray said. “Honestly, I really, really enjoy the training side of coaching. It doesn't matter what the sport is. No matter the sport, whether it's golf, watching a kid swing and trying to help tweak that, or it's in track, helping a kid run, or if it's in soccer, helping kick a ball, like all of the training sides of anything, I really enjoy. Watching a kid get better day after day, week after week, it doesn't matter if they're the star of the show, or if they're the fourth or fifth or sixth guy in line. Every one of those moments is pretty special, and seeing a kid just be motivated to try and get better for themselves and then also better for the team and for the greater good, that’s pretty special.”

“It's hard to get burned out when you've got kids that are wanting to hear what you have to say and when you've got kids that are wanting to try and get better and they're motivated,” Ray said. “Once I feel like the group that you're working with isn't motivated, or you as a coach aren't motivated, is when you just start to kind of see that downward spiral. But honestly, as long as the kids are excited and wanting to come to practice every day, then I'm excited to help program some things for them, and see where it takes them.”

Aside from winning, what’s a fun memory with your team that you’ve had from this past season? 

“So there's a song I kept trying to get them to sing it during the indoor season and during the winter, we are in a hallway just like most teams around our area,” Ray said. “I ended up getting this speaker for the team several years ago and we put it out in the hallway and we play music. I really tried, so it's like the dad trying to get his kid to think he's cool, that if I played a certain song, they all knew it. It’s [by] Biz Markie called ‘Just A Friend’. At the one part of the song where they start singing the chorus, I'm like, ‘Guys, when that comes up, you should sing it’ and I got a few of them to buy in and everybody reluctantly did it one day. At the very end of the season, I feel like it was when we got off the bus [from state], we had the fire trucks bring us into town and we got off the bus and we went into the stadium and Lucas Roos comes up to me and goes, ‘Coach, they should play that song we played in the hallways.’ It just blew my mind that Lucas even remembers that, the kids thought it was super cheesy but yet all of a sudden, he brings that memory back up.”

“The reason it's awesome is like you're stuck in a hallway, we don't have the fancy indoor tracks that some schools do so when you're stuck in a hallway, you literally have to make the best of it and you got to try and keep them excited,” Ray said. “Even if I have to be goofball one day so that they can kind of loosen up, they can just enjoy the experience no matter where we're at. I think that goes a long way. Lucas remembering that little moment that I thought the kids thought was dumb was was pretty cool.”

What’s a piece of coaching advice you’d give?

“I'm taking it directly from Brett Charlton, Eureka’s head coach, I bumped into him pretty early into the season and I see him around town,” Ray said. “He’s an absolutely awesome guy, awesome coach, I'm super excited for his retirement. But I asked him one day, ‘Coach, sorry to bother you, but you have kind of been in a situation like I'm in right now where you've got a pretty talented team and you think you might be able to do something. What bit of advice do you have?’ And we talked but it kind of all synthesized down to get a moment at a time and don't look at the end too soon because if you focus on the end, you're going to miss all the things in the middle. And that's something I told the boys all the time. That's something that I thought about all the time, was, literally, live in the moment.” 

“If you get too worried about the end and something hiccups in the middle, you're going to be pretty bummed out,” Ray said. “We know things might happen later on, but we just got to take it step by step. Honestly, that’d be the best bit of advice that I have gotten so that's definitely the advice that I would share.”