For Californians, the indoor track season seems weird. We don’t do indoors growing up with track. So it probably seems bizarre to the current Monta Vista track athletes that a Johns Hopkins season ended last Saturday, while MVTF has one dual meet plus RustBuster in the books.
A quick intro to a collegiate indoor season: There are season openers in December, right after the NCAA cross-country championships. In those December meets, endurance runners try to use their cross-country fitness to rack up some great early-season times while the speed and power athletes shake off a little rust. Some XC runners, like Parker Varby, will put up a rocking 5km time that qualifies for NCAAs and never hit that time again until the championship. Meanwhile, all the sprinters and field eventers build all January and February for conferences and NCAAs; and in mid-March, indoors is over, and we get started with outdoor track in a few weeks. It’s a compressed three-season schedule compared to the California experience.
For those of you who end up in the Midwest or the East, you will be in for a treat; indoor track is a blast! Everyone is close to the action, and with a 200m track, everything happens fast. The 400m is an unlaned race with a breakline at 150m, so it feels like a mini-800. Just seeing a banked track get raised up and dropped down was a revelation for me (the fancy tracks are hydraulic). It’s a gas.
Even though I have not been at Hopkins for even a month, they invited me to travel with them to NCAA nationals. I am grateful for this experience, seeing the Hopkins athletes compete at this level. Emmanuel Leblond, who ran in SCVAL and was in the CCS meet when Monta Vista athletes Soti Kougiouris (now a hurdler for UC Santa Cruz) was a senior and Clara Fan was a freshman, represented the Hop men in the 5km. The Hopkins women had a big contingent; as you can imagine, I was yelling hard for the DMR team as they ran to an NCAA First Team All-American finish.
I think I was most engaged during the long jump, however. Hopkins’ athlete Victoria Kadiri had an early 5.92m (19′-5″) jump that had her in first place. On the second to last jump, a competitor, Emma Seipel, leaped 5.93m–only a quarter inch further than Victoria. Victoria’s next jump was a little shorter so Emma still had a quarter inch lead. On Emma’s last jump, she went 5.99m–so now she had almost 3″ on Victoria. That almost felt better. But on Victoria’s last jump she flew–and went 5.99m, to tie Emma–but the tiebreaker was the second longest jump, so we were back to a 1/4″ loss!
Besides the excitement and disappointment of that moment, what impressed me most was what happened next. Victoria showed no disappointment at all; Victoria’s body language was great; she stood up straight and went to congratulate Emma, then thanked the judges. She was cheering for the DMR team the whole time they were racing. She bounced off the track (all during the meet, Victoria bounces and dances a bit while waiting for her jump, like she hears music playing in her head; I’d like to know her soundtrack to life). When she got back to the team, some of the other girls were asking if she was disappointed at taking the silver medal by such a small margin. Still, all Victoria could talk about was how dramatic the event was and how exciting it was to be part of a competition that came down to the last jump.
Victoria’s attitude towards life and life’s successes will take her far. Later that day, Victoria finished third in the pentathlon, and on Saturday, she triple-jumped 41’9.25″ (D3 is legit, and Hop has great event coaches) for an NCAA gold. Would she have done all that if she had been hanging her head and moaning about measurements? How would her teammates feel if she hung her head, went off by herself ,and went to be alone? We can’t know, but watching her happily boogie around the track on Saturday was a reminder to me that we always compete at our best with a smile on our faces and a song in our hearts. And that is true for life, also. Victoria’s smile and positive attitude will always draw great people to her. Victoria’s approach to life will lead to success in her academics (she is an engineering major at Hop, taking a serious load of classes).
In addition to the DMR and Victoria’s points in the pent, TJ and LJ, Lauren Phillips placed third in the 400m, and Sara Bartlett took 8th in the triple, as Hop ended up in third place and on the podium in NCAAs! Amazing, and it was such a gift to be a small part of this success.
On to outdoors!
Good luck to Monta Vista hosting Saratoga this week! And for everyone at St. Francis, the best of luck…that is a fun invitational, that tree in the middle of the track gets me every time!
Truly honored and fortunate to be a part of this with Hop!