It has been nearly four years since Neuqua Valley competed at Batavia High School. When the school left the Upstate Eight Conference for the DuPage Valley Conference, we were leaving behind some years competing at Batavia for the indoor conference meet at a facility well known for its fast track and field event areas. To find ourselves back in Batavia was a pleasant surprise to say the least. However, as we competed there on Friday night, the pleasant surprises kept happening.
It started with the field events where Jared Malcolm (Sr.) returned to the team after a one year hiatus. When Jared was a sophomore, his best mark in the High Jump was 5' 7". Therefore, it was a little surprising when he decided to enter the event at 5' 6". Nine inches later, Jared would clear 6' 3" to win the event, set an 8 inch personal best and achieve a State Qualifying Mark. Another event victory would come from Alex Kiefer (Sr.) in the Pole Vault, where Alex cleared 13' 6" and was just shy of the 13' 8" State Qualifying Mark. The Triple Jump would see EJ Oketona (So.) and Abood Armouti (Jr.) take 3rd and 4th respectively with marks of 38' 4" and 38' 0". EJ and Abood would also put up solid 400 m relay splits later in the meet during the 4 x 400 m relay. Finishing off the field events was another event win with Matt Appel (Jr.) thowing 53' 7" in the Shot Put, which betters the State Qualifying Mark of 52' 8". However, Matt scratched a huge throw that showed that his best marks are ahead of him. Moving to the track events, Michael Madiol (Sr.) took first place in the 3200 m with a time of 9:50.11, continuing the pattern that he set during the Cross Country season and showing that he has the range to run all of the distance events. He was followed by Vasant Fong (So.) and Aidan Stone (So.) placing 4th and 5th places with times of 10:15.47 and 10:20.31, which are both indoor personal bests for the 3200 m. After a long recovery from an injury, Aidan has shown that he is ready to race! The 55 m High Hurdles promised to be another fast time for Donovan Turner (Sr.) and he did not disappoint. Running 7.65 seconds, he broke the field house record and the school record in this event. The previous field house record was held by Sam Conger of Batavia, who just beat Donovan in the 110 m High Hurdles at the State Meet last season. Donovan would then run the next race, the 55 m dash, and take 3rd in a time of 6.83 seconds. Jonah Covarrubias (Sr.) took 6th in the 55 m with a mark of 6.90 seconds and Christian Allen (So.) took 7th in 6.92 seconds. Later in the meet, Donovan and Jonah would team up with Kel Foley (Sr.) in the fast heat of the 400 m where they would take the top 3 positions. Donovan was first in 52.67, Kel was second in 53.16 and Jonah was third in 53.79. These three athletes will be three legs of a fast 4 x 400 m in some upcoming meets! This trio would later run the 200 m with Donovan again taking first in 23.66, Kel taking 8th in 24.40 and Jonah taking 12th in 24.54. Many of these marks were indoor personal bests. Michael O'Connor (Sr.), fresh off of his Mr. NVHS win, took 5th in the 800 m with a time of 2:05.66. Jack Orengo (Sr.) took 7th in the same event with a time of 2:08.95, and both of these athletes put up indoor personal bests. Spencer Teske (Sr.) took 3rd in the 1600 m in an time of 4:34.91 and another indoor personal best. Jordan Matthews (Jr.) returned from a long injury to also record a personal best in a time of 4:48.93 in the 1600 m. Complete results from the meet can be found at the website below. Athletes should review their marks and see if they achieved a personal best and then figure out what changes they need to make to continue their improvement. www.athletic.net/TrackAndField/meet/363980/results If you look closely at the names listed above, many of these athletes are seniors. We know that we have a strong senior class. However, we have a good number of inexperienced athletes that need guidance and leadership from these seniors as they try to grow and improve. Some people think that leaders are born, but I would disagree. It takes practice and commitment to be a leader and people can get better at it. As we move into the latter part of the indoor season, I want to challenge our seniors to step up their leadership role. This is their team and the leadership that they give will determine where we go from here. Our next meet will be at Plainfield East on Thursday! We hope to see everyone there! This past Saturday, our team returned to Homewood-Flossmoor High School for a great meet with Argo, Homewood-Flossmoor, Minooka, Neuqua Valley and Shepard. In the team competition, Homewood-Flossmoor took 1st with 116.5 points and Minooka took 2nd with 116 points. Neuqua Valley finished 3rd with 76.33 points. While some may point out the fact that this meet put the top two teams in the State from last season together, it is worth noting that in this sport, our record does not matter. The only meets that matter are the Indoor and Outdoor Conference Meets, the Sectional Meet to qualify you for the State Meet and the State Meet itself. Winning any of the meets means that our team will have won that championship. We use these early indoor meets to help our athletes sharpen their skills and learn to compete.
This bring me to the idea of rankings. In pre-season polls, our team is ranked 2nd or 3rd in the State. What does this mean? Nothing. It is fun to see our team in the polls and these polls help athletes and fans get excited about the season. However, we do not pay much attention to them. We simply try to prepare our athletes the best that we can to get them ready for the important meets at the end of the season. If you do not perform at the end when it matters, no poll is going to save you. Therefore, despite the team scores, our team performed well. However, we were missing a few key players that are dealing with injuries, involved in other sports or were attending another meet. The meet began with with the 4 x 800 m relay team of Kevin Daneliak (Sr.), Michael Madiol (Sr.), Blake Storoe (Sr.) and Spencer Teske (Sr.) taking 1st place in a time of 8:36.95. Michael and Spencer put up 2:04 splits on their legs, which is impressive this early in the season. Following up this relay was another distance event, the 3200 m where Neuqua Valley would take the top 4 places. Leif Anderson (So.) took 1st in an time of 10:19.60, followed by Ryan Horn (So.) in 10:21.69, then Stephen Smilie (So.) in 10:25.18 and Quinn Kennedy (Jr.) in 10:38.51. Moving to the short sprints and hurdles, the 60 m would see Jonah Covarrubias (Sr.) and Aditya Sathyaprakash (Sr.) take 8th and 9th respectively with times of 7.48 and 7.49. Aditya would place 8th in the 200 m later in the meet with a mark of 24.88. Jonah would also be part of our fastest 4 x 200 m and 4 x 400 m relays at this meet. Jacob Guthrie (Sr.) took 2nd place in the 60 m High Hurdles with a time of 9:41. One athlete that we were missing at the meet was Donovan Turner (Sr.) since he was competing at the University of Kentucky's High School Invitational. Donovan took 5th place in the 60 m High Hurdles there, breaking the school record twice. In the preliminary heat, he ran 8.14 and then followed this up with an 8.07 in the final heat. Both of these marks break his own school record. Donovan's Interview after the race can be seen at the link below. il.milesplit.com/videos/339060 In the middle distance events, the 800 m would return Michael Madiol (Sr.) and Spencer Teske (Sr.) from the 4 x 800 m to place 2nd and 4th with times of 2:04.67 and 2:07.70. Michael and Spencer only had about an hour of rest before racing again. Kel Foley (Sr.) would take 6th in 2:08.79 and would later anchor our fastest 4 x 400 m relay with a 54.0 split. In the 600 m, newcomer Nate Passaro (Sr.) ran 1:39.70 to take 9th in a race where he showed that he has some true determination. The 1600 m saw a herd of Neuqua Valley athletes pushing themselves to top places and new personal bests. Michael O'Connor (Sr.) took 2nd overall in a time of 4:39.98, followed by Jack Orengo (Sr.) running 4:47.39 in 4th and Aidan Stone (So.) in 7th with a time of 4:54.53. Aidan kept making surges and fighting for every place during the race and broke his personal best that he had just set last week. Luke Suman (So.) took 9th in 4:58.53 and Noah Schalliol (Fr.) broke the 5 minute barrier, running 4:59.79, good enough for 10th place. Moving to the field events, our Pole Vaulters took many of the top places. Alex Kiefer (Sr.) won the meet with a jump of 14' 0", and is currently ranked 3rd in the State. Rahul Nair (Sr.) and Trevor Lambert (Sr.) jumped 11' 6" and 10' 0" for 3rd and 4th place, respectively. Jailen Poole (So.) jumped 10' 0" to tie for 5th. The Long Jump showed that we have a strong contingent of young jumpers almost ready to compete at the Varsity level with 4 Neuqua Valley Frosh-Soph Long Jumpers jumping 18' or better. These jumpers are Ethan Thomas (So.), Jailen Poole (So.), Paul Lee (Fr.) and Jack Wharton (So.). In the Triple Jump, Abood Armouti (Jr.) took 3rd with a jump of 37' 7" and also jumped 18' 3" in the Long Jump. The fact that we continue to produce horizontal jumpers is impressive considering that the only place where they see a pit and runway is at meets. Finally, Matt Appel (Jr.) threw 52' 8" in the Shot Put to easily win the meet. However, what was more impressive than his final mark was the potential in his last throw, which was well over the present school record of 54' 7.5" but Matt fell out of the ring, fouling. Matt is presently ranked 6th in the State and had he stayed in on his last throw, he would be in 5th. Complete results can be found at the link below. Find your mark, think about how you competed without emotion and then ask yourself what you can do this week to focus on so that you can improve. If you pick one thing to work on and translate it to a meet performance, you will see improvement in no time at all. www.athletic.net/TrackAndField/meet/359625/results Please see the link below for pictures that the Kiefer Brothers took at the meet. There are some great shots! https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=1zb5am5qdC31aqz7ivZ0XFor11RRC0uaR We compete this Friday night at Batavia. We hope to see everyone there! We opened our indoor season on Saturday with a triangular meet against Minooka and Plainfield South at Plainfield South. The goal of this meet was two-fold. We wanted to put down some early season marks and we wanted to compete. From top to bottom, our athletes showed that they are ready for the competitive part of the season to begin.
In the short sprints, we showed great depth with 11 athletes running 7.0 seconds or better. Jonah Covarrubias (Sr.) grabbed the top Neuqua Valley place with a mark of 6.7 seconds, tying for 3rd place overall. In the 55 m High Hurdles, Donovan Turner (Sr.) took 1st place in 7.6 seconds, only 0.8 seconds slower than his 55 m time. Donovan would later claim another 1st place in the 200 m, with a time of 23.7 seconds. In the longer sprints, Kel Foley (Sr.) and Jonah Covarrubias (Sr.) took 1st and 2nd place respectively in the 400 m with marks of 54.8 and 55.2 seconds. Our distance squad had the Gauntlet 1600 m to show their strength and fans lined the track to support the athletes as AC/DC's "Thunderstruck" roared over the loudspeaker. A Neuqua Valley senior quartet took places 3rd through 6th. Michael Madiol (Sr.) took the lead for our team in a time of 4:32.1, followed by Spencer Teske (Sr.) in 4:36.9, Matt Jett (Sr.) in 4:37.7 and Michael O'Connor (Sr.) in 4:38.9. Not to be outdone, our field event athletes put up some impressive early season marks. Matt Appel (Jr.) threw 52' 0" in the Shot Put to take 1st place. In the Pole Vault, Alex Kiefer (Sr.) also took the top position with a jump of 13' 0". Finally, in the Long Jump, EJ Oketona (So.) took 2nd place with a jump of 19' 1". While our team performed very well, this was just the starting point. Therefore, here is what I would ask of our athletes (and parents too). First, look up the meet results at the link below. www.athletic.net/TrackAndField/meet/362594/results Once there, find your name in the results by clicking on the events. By clicking on your name, you not only see all of your marks at this meet, but all of the marks in your entire career. (You can also achieve the same results by putting your name into the search bar.) Put simply, athletes should know their marks and personal bests. Marks that athletes achieve in meets are a way of measuring improvement and the website Athletic.net is a way for athletes to keep track of their progress. However, I would like to offer athletes some advice as they begin this season. Do not get focused on marks. Focus on process and competing. When an athlete discovers their mark at a meet or later in the results, I would recommend that they relax, and without emotion, reflect on the competition by asking themselves two questions. 1. What did I do well during this event? 2. What do I need to improve on for next time? During the next week, athletes should then focus on what they need in order to improve. Maybe they need to concentrate more on form, maybe they need to follow their race plan, maybe they need to abandon the plan and simply compete, maybe they need to get more sleep or watch their nutrition. Whatever the improvement needs, athletes should then take this self-given advice and use it during the next week and beyond to help themselves improve. In other words, they should focus on process. All too often, athletes will respond to events or marks as if the event was something that happened to them, rather than something they had active control over. They need to shift their mindset to one of process during practice and then do the same process in meets. Pick one or two things to concentrate on during practice in the next week to work on your biggest issues. By focusing on their biggest deficiencies, they can make the greatest changes. As the saying goes "A person either hates losing enough to change or hates changing enough to lose." Our next meet is next Saturday at Homewood-Flossmoor High School and we hope to see you there! |
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