Last Chance
To Dance the Last Dance*
Theoretically, the theme of this meet is to bring into focus every athlete’s dream of competing on a national level. The host—Embry Riddle—and several of the teams competing, of course, were looking towards the NAIA Indoor Track and Field Championships (February 28 to March 2nd, at Spire Institute, in Geneva, Ohio). If they had not already, this meet was their “last chance” to register an “A” (automatic) or “B” standard. In reality, 23 athletes met one standard or other in this meet-- by my count--either individually, or as part of a relay.
The Men’s list includes Gary Holmes of Florida Tech (B-6.95 in the 60); Dyrren Barber of Warner (B-49.42 in the 400); Michale Vidal of FAU in the 800 (A-1:55.14); Alec Hernandez of ERAU (A-2:30.30 in the 1000); Vincent Bett of ERAU (A-8:40.69 in the 3000); Embry Riddle’s 4 X 4 and 4 X 8 (a very close B in both-3:22.2 and 7:59.99, respectively); Mike Edwards of ERAU (6’ 10-3/4” in the HJ); Markell McKee of Brawton-Parker (46’ 7” in the TJ).
For the women, Lisa Nicolas of Warner (B-25.89 in the 200); Kristina Kendrick of ERAU (A-1:37.52 in the 600); ERAU’s 4 X 4 (A- 9:44.75); Liciane St. Jean of Warner (B-35’ 11-3/4” in the TJ); and Reta Woodard of ERAU (A-60’ 7-1/4” in the weight throw).
Karina Coelho of ERAU came within seconds in both the 800 (2:22.70; just over the 2:20.50 B standard) and the 1000 (3:04.74; 3:04 is the B standard). Karina, like many of the athletes, might have been feeling the effects of weather-related setbacks, best summarized by a Flagler-Palm Coast coach, Keenan Hreib: “It started out very cold, then got very warm, and now it’s very windy.”
Karina, whose 1000 meter PR of 2:56.11 was set in the last (2012) NAIA Indoor Nationals, wasn’t completely foiled.
“I would have liked to have stayed with the 1000, but it was too windy and I didn’t qualify. I’ll probably stay with the 800. This year I ran 2:16”—2:16.18 in the 800—“at Clemson, and qualified in that, so I’ll probably do that in two weeks at NAIA. And I’ll probably end up doing the 4 X 8 with Kira Ball, Lauren Eschelbach, and Nicole Bonk.”
To get to the root of a qualifying problem at this meet, and probably the disparity of qualifications in comparison of men and women, it might have been a matter of “muscles over meteorology.” Coelho has the “classic” figure of a standout distance runner, and in each race had to run multiple times into a strong head wind in the long straight-away towards the finish. (If the head-wind annoyed the distance runners, it was like a wall to the sprinters and hurdlers.)
“I had one of my old teammates, Bayleigh Hyatt, trying to pace me,” continued Katrina, “but the wind was a little too much and we went out too slow.”
Karina also qualified for the NAIA in the mile; she ran a 5:07.17 PR at the January 26th Jimmy Carnes Indoor Meet, but she admits that adding that race to her NAIA agenda might be counter-productive.
“That would just be too many events, and I would like to get All-American—top eight--in one of my individual events this year, as I did last.”
Wind at ground level was one thing, but leaving your feet and fighting the wind is something that the “aerialists” of track and field have to contend with even when blustery conditions aren’t evident to everyone else. Take pole vaulter extraordinaire Adam Holdsworth, who entered the meet with “high expectations.”
“I was hoping to get top seed for the NAIA,” he told me from the landing pad. (Having won the competition with a final clearance of 15’7”, he takes possession of the pads until the next competition….only kidding, but he did get to sit and chat for awhile.) “There are two guys at 5.1 meters (16’6-3/4”).”
The aforementioned high-flyers, both of whom recently “upped” their season best, are Easton Padden (Carroll College), at 17’ ¾” and Richard Depalma (Sienna Heights) at 16’ 9-3/4”. Adam ends the regular season “holding” the number three spot.
“A couple of weeks ago at Jimmy Carnes, I went out at 5.0 meters (a 16’ 4-3/4” PR), and at Clemson last week”--where he cleared 16’1”—“I was close at 5.05 meters (16’ 6-3/4”). I was hoping to get it here, and then bring it up at the NAIA. It’s frustrating, but I’m not disappointed. I know that I can go a lot higher; you just have to put it all together at Nationals.”
Of course, the wind might have had a compromising effect on his final clearance at the meet, so I asked Adam if he preferred competing indoors, where the environment is at least predictable.
“Cold, heat, or humidity doesn’t really bother me, but there’s a little more excitement indoors. The crowd is closer, and you hear them. Some places have a raised runway, which I like, so I think it is a little more exciting, and mentally, a lot of fun: the atmosphere and the noise. It’s different from outdoor track.”
Another Embry Riddle athlete that expects to finish the season on top is 7’ 2-1/2” high jumper (which he cleared at the 1/7/12 Indiana Open), Mike Edwards. Edwards would best be described as track’s version of a journeyman athlete. His first athletic commitment was at the University of Alabama, but he ended up competing for the University of Louisville (2010-2012), and, after being red-shirted, is now finishing up at Embry Riddle.
“Here, they’re very professional, and serious about the school,” he told me after winning the Last Chance high jump (6’ 10-3/4”). “It’s very prestigious on the academic level. The coaches and everyone are supportive of my endeavors. That environment allows me to keep everything balanced and prepare myself. It’s a great place to be.”
Edwards sees high jumping as his specialty.
“It has definitely been a big influence on my life, and has allowed me to get a good education, travel the world, and fortunately, allows me to compete overseas a lot. Originally, I was from Manchester, England, so I go back there to compete for my national team, or in the Olympic trials.”
(Mike, if his locution somehow passed overhead, is a communications major.)
Not yet at the “world level,” but getting there, is Lakeville, Minnesota high school pentathlete Shaina Burns. The most logical reason for Shaina, and her mother Dr. Luonna Burns, to travel 1530.7 miles (most of it straight down I-75) for a “long weekend” in Daytona Beach would be a temporary respite from the near-arctic conditions up north in the land of 10,000 outdoor hockey rinks. However, it wasn’t to be. (Ironically, their trip coincided with that of an icy branch of the Siberian Express, which made the temperature in both places roughly the same; weekend lows near the mid-20s.)
Their backup plan, however, was to get a head start on the spring track season. (When does that start up there, June, July…?) More specifically, Shaina—having proved herself as a state-level athlete in several events last spring—was hereabouts to compete in her newfound preoccupation of pentathlon-ism. (Is that a word, yet?) I snuck up behind her when she was competing in the javelin. Her mother interceded.
“She’s fairly new to it,” explained Luonna, who herself was a college athlete in the mid 1980s. “It’s not an event in Minnesota, so she only gets to throw the javelin three or four times a year.”
“Pretty much no one admits to it,” Shaina added jokingly. “There’s no coaching; I just “wing it.” (Back home) we look for drills online, and my mom translates them.”
“I threw the javelin while at Minnesota State (which she attended from1984-88),” Luonna said. “I only threw in three heptathlons. I just tried it (the hep) my senior year—my coach Donna Ricks talked me into it—and I was an All-American. I started it too late, but I knew that Shaina would be good at it. We’re kind of like twins”—would that be “Minnesota twins?”—“but she’s bigger and stronger than I was.”
“I won the Nationals in the USATF Jr. Olympics last summer,” added the second twin. “This year I’m going to try to go to the Worlds. The World Youth trials are in St. Louis (June 25th and 26th).”
“She was third in the heptathlon in the nation as a sophomore in high school,” Mom explained. “We have to pick which meets she’s going to enter, since they’re back to back: the USA Jr. Championships and the USATF Junior Championships. (Plus) to prepare for the pentathlon, Minnesota doesn’t have any at this time of year.”
A quick trip to the Minnesota MileSplit page of Shaina Burns is an eye-opener, as her sophomore record shows PRs of 14.99 in the 100 hurdles, 26.58 in the 200, 1:03.84 in the 400H, 2:27.71 in the 800, 36’ 9-3/4” in the shot put, 5’3” in the high jump, 17’ 11” in the long jump, and 177’4” in the javelin. Did I mention that she is a sophomore? At Last Chance, she could have slipped on a 2012 USA Olympic team uniform and it would have been totally believable. “She’s in high school?” said one of the meet directors.
And then there was that “minor thing”--Shaina’s “outside competition.” In the results of the March 14, 2010 Nike Nationals, her name appears about half-way down the pentathlon finals list, surrounded by girls whose year of high school graduation is listed as mostly 2010 or 2011 (with a couple of 2012s and a few 2013s). Her performance is overshadowed by her being listed as the class of 2014 (true in more ways than one).
Fast forward to July 8, 2012—after she had a few more meets experiences—and she won the Intermediate Girls Heptathlon at the USATF Region 8 Junior Olympics with 4722 points, by virtue of listings consisting of eight firsts, one second and one third place, on a day where she set most of her PRs.
Shaina’s counterpart in the javelin—she won at Last Chance with her “pre-season” throw of 105’ 3-1/2”—was 18-year-old Alexander Pascal of the Cayman Islands. Pascal’s throw pretty much doubled-to-tripled that of everyone else in the competition: 221’ 2-3/4”. The national record holder (at 226’ 11-1/4” at the June 20, 2012 Cayman National Championships) was, in Daytona Beach, closer to home than some of the international competitions that he has been in. Although still in high school, he has competed at the 2010 CARIFTA Games (209’ 7” on 4/09/12), the 2011 Commonwealth Youth Games on the Isle of Man (5th among the men with 197’ 5-1/4”), the World Youth Championships in Lille, France (July 9, 2011, where he threw the 700 g javelin 201’ 3”), and the Pan American Junior Championship (where he finished 9th overall). And to continue the comparison, he shares Shaina’s distinction of not having formal coaching (this according to a reliable source).
Coaching at the Florida college level, of course, leaves little to be desired, and this is especially true at Embry Riddle where more than a score of athletes have made it into the national spotlight in recent years (Sammy Vazquez, Evans Kirwa, and Nicole Bonk, to name a few). Coaches Hopfe’s/Rosolino’s latest work-in-progress is Vincent Bett. Vincent is yet another product of Eldoret, Kenya, by way of Mid-Tennessee State, and is looking like a sure bet to inherit the ERAU distance crown, previously worn by Vazquez, and passed on to Kirwa. Kirwa has used up his college eligibility, but was on hand to run a couple of races. (He was second in the mile—4:24.80—and ran part of the 3000 with Bett.)
“The game plan”—in the 3000—“was for him to pace me for five laps, and then go off,” Vincent explained. “I was trying to qualify for Nationals. I got it (with 8:40.69). That’s an A standard.
Vincent is a sophomore, majoring in aircraft maintenance. One day in the not-too-distant future, while your plane is sitting on an airport runway, and in looking out the passenger seat window, you just might see a familiar face hard at work to assure that plane’s safe passage.
Like many of the athletes “still hanging in there” after graduation, Lifespeed athlete Shane Crawford has no intentions of making a hasty retreat from competition. He left Purdue with PRs of 6.66 in the 60, 10.18 in the 100 (which made him the 2012 Big Ten Champion last July 1st), and 21.36 in the 200. At Last Chance, he ran the 60 into an approximate two mph head wind, and won by .12 seconds in 6.83. After the race, he brought me “up to speed” on his whereabouts.
“I’m from Indiana, but down here training in Minneola,” he said. “I just finished up my fifth year at Purdue. I competed from 2008-2011, but graduated this year. I train here permanently with Derrick Wright. There are no 60s in Florida, so we picked up this meet. I wanted to get in one more meet for a qualifying time—6.72--but this was only my second meet. My season opens at Grand Valley State University, in Michigan.”
In consideration of the headwind’s probable effect on his finish time, I asked him about the differences between competing indoors and outdoors.
“That’s the thing; it was windy, and you can’t hold that against them (the meet organizers). If there was this much of a tail wind, I’d of had a PR. But it was a head wind, and you take it as it comes.”
That laissez-faire attitude is typical of an outdoor meet during the indoor season: it’s great to be outdoors, but don’t let your expectations get too far ahead of your training, as explained by double winner Michael Cassidy, formerly of Sneads High School—“up in the panhandle, close to Alabama,” was his description—where he finished first in the shot (51’ 10”) and fourth in the discus (144’ 9”) at the 1A FHSAA Meet on April 27, 2012. Michael had a long career at Sneads, which included football and track, but he readily concedes that the allure of the weights have overtaken and passed pretty much everything else in his life. A college freshman, he now competes for Warner.
“42.50”—139’ 5-1/4”—“that’s not a bad place to be at this time of year,” I overheard him saying to his coach. To me, he added, “We’re trying to hit 47 (meters) by the national meet…pretty soon, but that’s not bad. We’re all just trying to do our best, and that results in a team best. Everyone has been trying really hard to make it to Nationals.”
Michael finished the day with a first in the shot put (45’ 1-1/4”), second in the discus (139’ 5-1/4”), and third in the weight throw (40’ 2”).
“My goal is to win the Nationals in the shot put and discus, but I will have to get a 17 or 17.5 (between 55’ 9-1/4” and 57’ 5”) in the shot, and in the disc a 57 or 58 (187’ or 190’ 3-1/2”)…maybe further.”
And after college?
“I want to become a pastor, or missionary, or both…just try to serve God in some way, and do for Him what He did for me.”
The meet produced three double winners, all women: the aforementioned Karina Coelho (800 and 1000), Embry Riddle’s national 
class event specialist Reta Woodard (60’ 7-1/4” in the weight throw and 151’ 5-3/4” in the discus), and Warner’s Liciane St. Jean in the jumps (16’ 7-1/2” in the long jump and 35’ 11-3/4” in the triple jump).
Liciane competed for Lely High School, in Naples, Florida, and moved on to the Lake Wales college still undecided as to her major, but with criminology on a “short list.” On the other hand, her decision to compete for Warner has been decidedly well-spent: in the meet she set two college bests, and a PR in the long jump.
“This was basically our last chance to make the Nationals; in other words, to decide whether or not we go. I want to go; I gave it my all and did what I had to do.”
And that says it all.
*with all due respect to Donna Summer, a few songwriters, the Universal Music Publishing Group, EMI, Sony, et. Al.
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