With 35 different high school track meets to choose from, the weekend of March 18 to 21 shuffled the deck better than a dealer in Vegas, and when Deltona was done, Deland carried away all the chips.
Deland did so, not with straights and flushes, but with more humble hands. Their boys used two firsts, three seconds, two thirds, five fourths, three fifths and a sixth to total their 110.5 point win. Their girls scored similarly--one first, six seconds, four thirds, five fourths, three fifths and four sixths for a whopping 143..5 total points.
Conspicuous in their absence, first-tier athletes were spread pretty evenly around the state, and in their stead, this meet produced some relative newcomers to the top step of the winner‘s stand. Take, for example, Deland’s Alex Younk, who can throw a 1.6 kilogram (3.53 pounds) high school discus further than most of us has ever thrown a Frisbee. His toss of 144’7” was clearly the class of the field. In the past two meets, however, Younk’s talents were somewhat overshadowed by a certain nationally ranked athlete who was, this weekenc, engaged elsewhere (and as usual, going 170-something in the discus).
Deland senior Mark Joyce, winner of the 110s in 15.18, and second in the 200 (22.9), set the tone for the Bulldog boys: run hard and take what you can get.
“This is my third year of track--I’ve run the 100, 200 and four by one--but my first year of running hurdles,” he explained after his win in the opening event, the 110 hurdles. “I have also done the long jump. I jumped 19’9”, but didn’t do it last year because of my knee,” he said, alluding to a football injury.
Right from the first heat, the wind seemed to be one more competitor to beat, and by virtue of the bright yellow gauge that occupied a “seventh lane” just off the track, was not always helpful.
“It felt like a slow race; I was jumping too high,” said Joyce. The temperature was good, but the wind made you stay in the air too long.” Hang time. “I was jumping too high.”
There were no complaints from fellow footballer, senior Andre Debose of Seminole. With a 3..8 mph tail wind, and a gust-catching upper body that looked more like a door than a torso, he busted the 100 wide open with a 10.68, a serious challenge to the early season rankings, wind or no wind.
Later in the meet, however, fates would be reversed, as Debose pulled up lame in the 200, and Joyce moved up a spot (second in 22.9) behind Andre’s Seminole team mate, Jerod Joyce (first in 22.5). Jerod, a junior, ran second to Debose in the 100 (11.18).
The meet produced only one triple, and a pair of double winners. Ninth grader Bianca Miller of Oviedo was the meet’s only three event winner, taking the 100 (12.54), 200 (25.62) and long jump (15’6”).
Tori Lawson, a senior at Ocala’s Vanguard High School, won two--the 800 in 2:24.49 and the 1600 in 5:16.33--and missed a third when her team finished two seconds behind Winter Park’s 10:06.33 4 X 800 in the first heat of the meet..
“I was really confident in the mile…I was pretty sure I could have it,” she said after her 12 and a half second win over a field otherwise led by ninth grader Anne-Marie Blaney of Bellview. “Although I thought I would run more like a 5:19, I was pretty happy with the faster time. Basically I wanted to go out hard and hold on.”
The middle distance was also the modus operandi of the only boys’ double winner, sophomore Tucker Morgan of Lake Brantley.
“I think I could have gone 4:35 (in the mile) if I had some competition,” he said after his 4:40.09 win in the 1600. “I was feeling pretty comfortable the whole way.”
Morgan feels that his weekly workouts of twelve 400s--which he tries to hold between 65 and 67 seconds per lap--helped him to a winning pace.. His team mate, Ryan Jones, who ran a 4:34.40 at the Bob Hayes Invitational and a 4:33 a week ago, is usually just ahead of him in the four-bys.
“They hurt really bad, but get you ready for the race.”
Things got dark long before they got over, and when the wind shifted at dusk the smoke from a nearby brush fire added to the ambience.
In the shadows and gloom of that moment, James Ort of Bellview, shed a lot of light on an event that rarely attracts much attention from the crowd usually focused on the oval. The pole vault was being held at one end of the track, on the far side of the fence paralleling the first turn.
Deland‘s Chad Baumann, a freshman, had long before topped out at nine feet, and was leading. Ort, who came in at 11, almost “no heighted it,” as he quipped. Upping it to 11-6, he continued to have problems, but “I adjusted my step and it was smooth sailing after that.” He went over 12 feet, then 12-3. All this was witnessed by the handful of people still standing behind the pads.
At that moment, however, a girl’s voice changed the mood by announcing over the PA system, “And now James Ort will try for 12’6” in the pole vault..” Eyes stage right.
“This is the first time it has been this dark…the first time I’ve not been able to see the planting box. I couldn’t see where to set the pole, so they set up a flood light. Depth perception was a problem too.”
And so was the wind, which had begun to kick up, and then shifted.
“Ideally you want a tail wind. Tonight we had a head wind. That was not good. So I tried to go in between .”
And over. First 12-6. Then 13-0, which was his best ever. But he was the only left in the vault and had little rest between jumps.
“My neck and back were killing me. But,” he said with a grin, “you have to please the crowd.”
13-3 certainly did that, as every successful vault drew an oversized reaction from whomever was left from the ever-shrinking crowd.
Exhaustion however, brought him back to earth and 13-6 alluded him. But, as Ort summed it up, “That was fun.”
Fun,, however, is an elusive goal for two milers. They want to run fast, but have to wait until nearly the very end of the meet to do so. By then, it was cool, dark, damp and smoky. In other words, perfect to run lap after lap after lap. Welcome to the world of the distance runner.
“My strategy today was to run around a five minute first mile, and then try to run 75 second laps after that,” explained David Dechellis of Lake Brantley..
Whether David Dechellis intended to go out in five flat is academic. Thinking his team was 6..5 points behind Seminole for the lead--team scores were lagging behind the event sheets--Deland’s Andrew Epifanio tried to make some of that up in the next-to-last event. He went out right behind the early leader, David Parsons (Oviedo) which pulled Dechellis, Wesley Cutler (Lake Brantley) and Bill Bcaes (Vanguard) along in the chase. By the mile, Epifanio (in fifith) was odd man out of the lead pack of four, which eventually dwindled to two.
“The first mile he (Parsons) led,” explained Dechellis, “and after passing the (start/) finish line he opened up and I went with him.”
With a two man race came the predictable sprint to the finish.
“Last week he (Parsons) and I sprinted down for third place at the Brantley Open and I got him in the last 100 yards.”
Dechellis won in 10:02.5; Parsons was second in 10:05.56.
Although the last event, the 4 X 400 was won by Winter Park in 4:09.70, the last race (second heat of the 4 X 400) was won by the home team, clinching a moral victory, if not an actual win. Chris Boetticher, J.D. Littell, and Kevin Richardson kept it close enough for anchor Matt Prettyman to out kick the lone runner between him and the finish.
“He was going,” observed Prettyman. “He had a bit of a ways on me…but I reeled him in.”
Footnotes: Up again at 5:30 am the next morning, and on yet another starting line--he competed in the mile and two mile at Deltona--Andrew Epifanio was trying to defend his six point lead in the Daytona Area Road Race Grand Prix at 7:30, less than ten hours after he finished the two mile race at Deltona. If he missed the last two races in the series--which fall in the middle of track season--he would no doubt lose the title. He took the early lead in the Sandpiper 5K, held it the whole way, and won in 17:12. He now leads the GP with 58 points, with one race to go.