In January, Zach Extine broke the UA 60-meter hurdling record.

That was the first time.

Just a week after, he broke the record he set.

And at the Big 12 Championships, he set a new record.

The athlete his coach calls a “mild-mannered young man” not known to boast or brag now has the bragging rights to a record he might just break again.

“If I had three guys walking downtown, and someone had to say, ‘Which one is an elite hurdler?’, I promise you, he is not the one they are going to point at,” coach Fred Harvey said about the Arizona native Extine. “But he has a fire inside him that he won’t talk about.”

This January, the senior arrived at his first ever indoor collegiate meet, the NAU Axe ‘Em Open in Flagstaff,  after battling injuries his previous seasons.

The new environment didn’t intimidate him a bit.

“He told me after the preliminary round that ‘I need to break the school record right now’,” Harvey said. “I said look man, just do what you do.”

Extine’s fire led him to break the school record with a time of 7.74, shaving .03 seconds off the previous record.

“Running hurdles, your touchdowns don’t lie,” Harvey said. “He was doing it in training, but I didn’t expect that he was going to break it at the very first competition.”

Extine, however, left nothing to chance.

“Even if it’s a preliminary race, I’m just going to leave it all out there and let the cards fall how they will,” he said. “I was pretty close to the record at the Red, White and Blue intrasquad meet, so I thought I might as well go for it.”

Coach Harvey, who recruited Extine out of high school, is no stranger in the world of school records. Coaching at the university for 38 years, he helped many athletes achieve their goals – including Jeff Hunter, the previous school record holder with a time of 7.77.

“Zach and Jeff are polar opposites personality wise,” Harvey said. “The common ground is that they are super intelligent young men.”

Extine had to master a new hurdle technique to break Hunter’s 18-year-old record.

“I said to Zach, there’s going to be a new dance move,” Harvey said. “Can you dance? And he said ‘Yeah, I can dance that’.”

The weekend after competing in Flagstaff, Extine was chasing his own school record at Corky Classic in Lubbock, Texas, when he trimmed .08 seconds to set a new record of  7.66.

“I internalize it that it’s not even my record,” Extine said. “I just need to break it.”

Despite making history twice, Extine wasn’t finished: he shattered the school record at the program’s first indoor Big 12 Championships earlier this month in Lubbock at 7.62.

With some fruitful meets behind them, Extine and his coach are looking forward to a successful outdoor season.

The team used the indoor season to improve their speed, power and coordination, Harvey said.

“But because we are training for the outdoor season doesn’t mean that the indoor season doesn’t matter. When we get to the line, we are trying to win,” he said.

By the end of the year, Extine is hoping to be an All-American and to make it to the NCAA Championships finals.

“I’m just taking it day by day,” he said. “But I haven’t broken an outdoor record yet, so I’m definitely going to do that,” he added.

Arizona Sonoran News is a news service of the University of Arizona School of Journalism.