Lake Park weight men do it again
It can't be overstated - Lake Park is enjoying an incredible cycle of throwers.
Tuesday at the Lancers' own triangular meet with Bartlett and Metea Valley, Lake Park juniors Jermaine Kline, Jeremy Kline and Greg Block recorded shot put marks that all would have topped Jermaine's third-place throw of 56 feet, 93/4 inches in the 2009 Class 3A state meet.
Coming off his personal-record 62-foot, 3-inch mark at Saturday's Wheaton North Best Four, Jermaine Kline went 63-6 on Tuesday, and threw the discus 172-4 for good measure.
Twin brother Jeremy went 61-10 and 170-6 in both implements, and Block threw personal-bests of 58-6 and 161-3, respectively.
"What's surprising to me is how well they've thrown the discus at this point," said Lake Park throws coach Bob Nihells, who saw Jeremy Kline hit 62 feet this indoor season and coached two state-champion Block brothers, Dan and Scott. Dan is arguably the best weight man Illinois has produced, his 2009 distances of 66-3 in shot put and 208-11 in discus the longest recorded.
Never too high, Nihells realizes mid-April marks look great but mean little.
"We're just hoping to continue to improve," he said. "There are still some technical issues that need to be addressed."
Patience, patience: Naperville Central finished fourth at last Saturday's five-team Wheaton North Best Four Invitational, but Redhawks senior Mitch Gilbert saw positive things during a great spring day.
"As a team I think we really had a pretty good day," Gilbert said. "We're really young, we've got a majority of sophomores and juniors as our team. A lot of them had to go take the ACT so they came back and did some pretty intense races."
A four-year Redhawks runner, Gilbert considers himself one of several vocal leaders on this year's squad.
"All the seniors work really hard in practice," he said. "We always tell (the younger athletes), 'Hey, quit goofing around' or 'Come do this interval with us.'"
There was no goofing in the Redhawks' first running event, the 3,200-meter relay. Sophomore Brad Kouchoukas, seniors Kyle Burkwald and Mark Juretschke and junior Mikey Simon placed second to a solid, veteran Wheaton Warrenville South group.
Gilbert took second in the top flight of the open 3,200, and Naperville Central also got good marks in the 400 from sophomore David Storino and freshman Jan Torres.
The Redhawks finished strong with a third-place showing in the 1,600 relay with Gilbert, Torres, Storino and another sophomore, Adam Spaccapaniccia.
Gilbert wasn't pleased to be passed by Lake Park's Luke Nally in the open 3,200, but the meet-ending relay helped make up for it.
"It was kind of nice to come back and have a solid race here," Gilbert said. "It's so early in the season, there's plenty more left in the tank and there's plenty more races to go."
Tamba rolls with "wave": Also at Wheaton North, the Falcons' own Ivan Tamba looked healthy as a horse winning the top-level 100-meter dash with a hand-held time of 10.8 seconds. He returned to hold off WW South's Kevin Piraino in the 200 at 21.5.
A senior with three state relay medals to his credit, Tamba looked sharper than at the DuPage Valley Conference indoor meet when he finished fifth in the 100 and third in the 200.
He said the tight turns of the indoor surface don't favor him, and also he was bothered by a left hamstring strain. Neither weight training nor rest seemed to help.
"I didn't listen to my body," said Tamba, but he did listen to his coaches' suggestion to pick his knees up higher. And he listened to Steve Major, a Falcons volunteer assistant who also is a chiropractor.
Major employed an electronic muscle-stimulus device called an ARPwave, short for Accelerated Recovery Performance. Major said this system allowed graduated York sprinter John Fox help the Dukes win a 2009 state title after being hamstrung nearly all season.
"We've been just hitting it with therapy to get my hamstring better," Tamba said after his 200 victory.
"I figured I'd do a little better outdoor, and my leg's been getting a lot better. I just wanted to come out here and run a race."
Answering the Bell: Downers Grove North third-year boys track coach John Sipple won't be with the Trojans on Saturday at West Aurora's John Bell Invitational.
He'll be leaving for Boston that day. The Eastern Illinois University graduate is competing in the 114th running of the Boston Marathon on April 19.
As a distance guy Sipple can probably relate best to Trojans runners like Ben Silver and Brian Llamas. But Sipple hopes his sprint group can duplicate what they did indoors.
TaSean Jackson set a school record of 22.82 seconds in the 200-meter dash at the West Suburban Silver indoor meet, and joined Rob Lott, Zach Augustine and Courtney Greenwood on a record-setting 800 relay. In the 55 dash Lott's 6.4-second clocking eclipsed a Downers North record that had stood since the mid-1960s, Sipple said.
Jackson, who attended Downers North as a freshmen then spent two years at Downers South before transferring back cross-town, was briefly on both schools' indoor record boards. He was part of Downers South's indoor-record 800 relay until Shane Molidor, Jason Jozaites, Jon Aldrin and Sean Akporido set a new mark at the Illinois Prep Top Times Indoor Classic in March.