Boys track and field: Doing double duty
Coaches will seek diamonds in the rough.
How about a diamond from the diamond? Be they baseball players, soccer converts or dual-sport players, track coaches enjoy landing talented athletes who can show up unexpectedly. This season offers the usual interesting assortment.
Montini senior Justin Blake may earn four varsity letters this school year. The quarterback of the Broncos' Class 6A football championship team moved on to basketball and this spring is a member of both the track and baseball teams.
An infielder, outfielder, pitcher and pinch runner on the diamond, Blake also high-jumped 6 feet, 2 inches indoors at Plainfield North on March 12.
He scored points at the Chicago Catholic League indoor championship with an early 5-6 jump but was pulled after feeling a twinge in the knee, Broncos track coach Eric Brechtel said. Blake will jump next at the DuPage County Meet as well as the CCL outdoor championship.
Athletes from smaller schools with smaller talent pools are better able to split roles. Wheaton Academy junior Jonah Jones is making the most of both track and tennis this spring.
Coming off a sophomore track season in which he finished 21st in Class 2A in the 3,200-meter run (four places behind teammate Jacob Robleski) and narrowly missed a state doubles berth with brother Christopher Jones II, now playing tennis at Wheaton College, Jonah has kicked it up a notch.
He's playing at No. 1 doubles with younger brother Noah, 4-3 so far. On April 23 against primarily Class 3A runners at the Peterson Prep, Jonah's first-place time of 4 minutes, 28.98 seconds in the 1,600 made him just the second Warrior, behind 2001 Class A champion Matt Field, to break 4:30 in the event.
Coaches may begrudgingly share athletes, but it's usually a win-win. Particularly when one of the coaches is the athlete's father.
"It's quite a bit of juggling, but Jonah's work ethic enables him to be very good at both," said Wheaton Academy tennis coach Christopher Jones I, who reviews schedules and priorities weekly with track coach Chris Felinski.
"He is a rare athlete that can do that," Felinski said. "Better splitting him than having no Jonah. Can't argue with a 4:28."
Larger schools have less leeway, or need, to let athletes shuffle sports. Downers Grove South track coach Dustin Hausherr routinely had Ben Jung jump for him during indoor season only to have Jung move on to baseball. This season he stayed put.
"I think he saw how good he was doing," Hausherr said.
The 5-foot-9 senior leads DuPage County in both long jump and triple jump, at 22-9 and 45-8, respectively, which he compiled over the Mustangs' consecutive home invites on April 16 and April 22.
"He wanted to try something new, he wanted to see how good he could be outdoors if he stuck with it the whole season," Hausherr said. "He still loves baseball, but he really wanted to try something different."
Soccer players have long been a staple of track. They can run all day long and there's no conflict with high school schedules. Examples include current Wheaton Academy all-state sprinter Ty Seager, Glenbard West's Jimmy Kinn from the early 2000s or Downers Grove North's Jordan Munar, who came out of nowhere to finish sixth in the Class 3A 200 dash in 2012.
Like Munar, who had never run for the Trojans until his senior year, sometimes soccer players just fall into a coach's lap. Michael Noble has done this at Hinsdale South for coach Dean Norman.
Indoors the track newcomer joined veteran stars Brian Jordan, Charlie Nodus and Roman Drabchuk to set a Hornets 1,600 relay record, by nearly five seconds at 3:29.8, at the Mustang Relays at North Central College.
The West Suburban Gold indoor 400-meter champion, Noble went on to tie a program 400 record at the Illinois Prep Top Times and outdoors has threatened sub-.50 the past two weeks with top-five finishes at Downers South's Bud Mohns and Bob Cohoon invites.
"(He's) friends with many athletes on track and they talked him into it his senior year," Norman said. "He really loves track and wishes he had tried it earlier."
As Noble has found out, it's never too late.
Twin terrors:
Neuqua Valley track has achieved much in its relatively short history. But never at an invitational had a pair of Wildcats throwers finished first and second in both shot put and discus.
That changed April 16 at Metea Valley. Senior twins Tom and Anthony "A.J." Cwiok went 1-2 in shot put, both over 48 feet, and followed suit in discus at Tom's 159-6 and A.J.'s 147-3.
In discus the brothers are now up to 168-10 for Tom Cwiok and 155-6 for A.J; in shot put they're at 52-3ΒΌ and 50-4, respectively. Babatunde "O.J." Oshinowo owns both program records at 170-10 in discus and 56-1, each from 2001.
Time change:
As of this writing Weather.com had chances for Saturday precipitation in Glen Ellyn at 80 percent. Such concerns have caused Glenbard West to move its annual Jim Arnold Invitational to 5 p.m. Friday rather than its usual Saturday morning start. This will be varsity only; the frosh/soph portion has been canceled.
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