POLAR BEAR PLUNGE

CENTRAL CATHOLIC & SAINT HELENS @ WESTVIEW
POLAR BEAR PLUNGE
12 MARCH, 2008

Your Rams opened the 2008 season at Westview in what has now become a season-opening tradition – the Polar Bear Plunge. Despite the meet’s moniker, the weather on this day was quite reasonable – mid 50s with sporadic showers. With the always strong St. Helens squad also attending, the competition was solid; coupled with our boys’ obvious enthusiasm, this looked to be great fun for the Central Catholic squad. While there was not a plethora of personal best marks set on this day, there was no shortage of fine competitive efforts – from our veterans as well as many newcomers.

Our throwers – with new coaches Mark Reinke (shot/disc) and James Mick (javelin) – have a very large, young, and potentially dangerous crew. On this day JOE LOPEZ ‘10 eclipsed his frosh PR in the shot by 2 ½ feet with a 3rd place finish here at 43’4. Other notables in the shot were CONNOR CHILDERS ‘08 – returning from a two year hiatus to PR here by 4 ½ feet, MIKE VILLAFRANCA ‘10 with a fine 37’8 in his first ever shot competition, and youngster JASON EVANS ’10 and SPENCER LAIS ’11 at 35’0 and 34’1 respectively.

Many of the same young men had success in the discus, but KEVIN DIMMITT ’09 was the team leader at 105’2. As the disc is a much greater event to master, it is likely that this group of athletically talented young men will progress at a great rate in the discus during the final third of the season.

The Ram javelin throwers were lead by, GULP, a freshman – MARCUS BRANNON. Marcus had success a year ago at All Saints throwing the turbo jav – he was 2nd in the CYO Championships at 139’4 – but many youngsters have difficulty adapting to the full size implement. Apparently this isn’t going to be the case for young Mr. Brannon. His 122’1 is only 13 feet shy of the CC Top Ten List for Freshmen, a list that’s been cracked only once since 1985! Also performing well was JAMES GAISER '11, over the 100 foot mark in his first competition.

While our group was not sufficiently prepared for the pole vault nor the triple jump on this day, our high jumpers and long jumpers apparently were. In the long jump BRYSON KOCH ‘10 and BLAKE RILEY ‘10 led the way at 18’6 and 17’9 ½, both within a few inches of their PRs. The high jump was the highlight of the meet for many as it played out after the 4 x 400m relay was completed; most of the team migrated there to see LEVI GREGG ’11, GAISER, KOCH, and JON FARLEY ’10 battle with rivals from both Saint Helens and Westview. Our enthusiastic and supportive group clearly had a positive effect on this group, with Koch leading the way at 5’2. While this may not be a mark that will score at our District Meet, the excitement of this young group (three sophs and a freshman) has the coaching staff buzzing about their future.

In the sprints and hurdles it was, again, a large group of newcomers that had the crowd’s attention. First year tracksters BRANDO DELGADO ’09 and SETH DOWNES ’10 were each competitive in the 100m; Brando looked even better in the 200m, and both ran very aggressive legs in the 4 x 400m relay. For each of them it was first-ever effort over a full lap of the oval (58.4 for Brando, 56.2 for Seth). MARC ANDRE ’11 ran on both relays and put up solid frosh marks in the 100m and 200m. Classmates WES GUY and CHARLES TAYLOR-LOVE each won their heat of the JV 100m. One more freshman, BRENNAN SCARLETT, ran 56.6 for his 400m leg, eliciting one of the great crowd noises in all of sport – the elongated “WOOOOOOOHHHHHH” – as he made up almost 30m on the pair of runners in front of him. Brennan, the son of Saint Mary’s Academy sprint coach Paul Scarlett, had barely one week of practice under his belt; he appears to possess some great tools for this sport.

As for the veterans in the sprints and hurdles, HEW COMMEREE ’08 put in his regular long day in the short relay, long relay (a PR 55.4), and 300m hurdles (equaling his PR 45.2). JOE PARKER ‘09 led the team in both the 200m and 400m with a 3rd place and 2nd place finish in those events. LUCAS NOLING ’10, the freshman record holder in the 300m hurdles, picked up where he left off a year ago in lowering his PR in that event to 43.8, the #9 sophomore time in CC history. He returned a half hour later to PR in the long relay at 57.1.

Our typically strong distance crew was a shell of itself on this day with numerous athletes out due to illness and (minor) injury. Regardless, there were still some fine efforts, led by PETER SLAUSON’s ’10 victory in the 1500m (4:27.1). He was followed across the line by three first timers – SCOTT LEE ’10 (4:44), MIKE LASKOWSKI ’11 (4:57), and GEORGE MISTKAWI ’10 (5:03) – all of whom show great promise for the future.

Although NATHAN LIGHTNER ‘09 has spent his first two years as a sprinter/hurdler, it is no secret that he has designs on becoming part of the distance tradition here. This winter he ran 1:22.81a for 600m indoors in Seattle before dropping down to the 400m just last week (49.70a); today he moved up to the 800m and had an impressive debut at 2:04.4. Although he’ll focus on the 400m and 300mh this season, there is little doubt that Nathan will dip under the 2:00 barrier as he gains experience in this event. AUSTIN JONES ’08 was 3rd in the 800m, not far from his PR while ZACK TEENY ’11 looked very strong at 2:16.6 in his first effort as a Ram. Zack is a young man for whom we have high expectations this season and beyond.

The 3000m was left to a group of very inexperienced runners, and they performed very well today. NATHAN COLLINS ’10 got his first taste of the longer race in finishing 7th while RICK SULLIVAN ’11 and WARREN DEGENHARDT ’10 ran step for step in 5th and 6th (11:51 & 11:52). Further up the track LUKE MILLER ’11 was running a very aggressive race in 3rd (11:15), showing great improvement since the fall.

With spring break on the horizon the Rams won’t officially compete again until April 9th when we host the Barlow Bruins (and Saint Mary’s Academy on the girls’ side). We’re always in need of volunteers for our home meets; let us know if you’d like to help out.

Hope to see you soon!