2023 Newton Invite Recap
Every season has its ups and downs, and so does every meet. The 2023 Newton Invite was no exception. Every year I tell our guys that this meet marks the beginning of Championship season for our team… Conference follows a few days later, and then only one meet (the Charleston Invite) sits between us and the post-season. Our friends at Newton put on a great meet that is super competitive; it’s a great lead in to Conference. Typically by this time, we start to settle in on how we are going to fill out the event sheet for the rest of the year, but this year things were a bit more unsettled for two reasons: weather and health. We’ve seen two major invites on our schedule cancelled due to weather, and two more severely impacted by temperatures and/or high winds. As a result, we came into Newton with only one meet that took place in decent conditions (and even that one - Mascoutah - was too windy). Limited opportunities and sub-par conditions make evaluating your roster more difficult than it would normally be.
Thankfully, despite a less than ideal forecast, Friday wound up being an above average night in terms of weather (a slight headwind kept it from being an A+ in my book). But that second factor - health - was still lurking. 4 of our top performers (Ayden Cothern, Hallam, Pianfetti, and Hough) had been nursing injuries over the past week. All of them were mentally ready to compete, and all were deemed healthy and cleared by our fantastic Athletic Trainer (Mary Grace Inyart) to be full go. However, we were also prepared to pull any of them at a moment’s notice. Aside from making me a nervous wreck all night, we managed to finish the meet without any major issues, but health did wind up playing a role at several points for us during the meet. Even with all that, it was an exciting night with some enormous highlights, some gutsy performances, and a third place team finish at a fantastic meet featuring almost 20 teams. Only two of the premier 1A programs in the state finished ahead of us: #1 Ranked St. Teresa, and the host Newton Eagles, one of the teams we’ll be battling it out with for the Conference Championship on Wednesday.
The Right Race on the Right Day
We’ve been waiting for a month to find out what our 4x1 was made of. We knew we had a special group, but cancellations, poor exchanges, and bad weather have kept us from learning what that talent would translate to on the clock. For the past few weeks, we’ve been talking about getting ourselves in order so that we could run the right race on the right day, whenever that day happened to arrive. Last Saturday at Edwardsville, we executed against some outstanding competition, but the weather conditions were brutal. We came away wondering what that performance would have looked like on a good day. The best we had was a guess-timation based on previous performances of some of the top flight teams we ran against, which told us we were capable of running a low 43… good enough to shatter the school record by 3 quarters of a second (that’s quite a bit in anything sprint-related) and putting us well below the qualifying standard for State. Exciting stuff, but meaningless unless we actually put it together.
When we arrived at Newton Friday, I knew immediately it could be our day. Decent temps, little to no wind (for once), and a lane assignment that put us side by side with the 2nd fastest 4x1 in 1A - St. Teresa came in running a 42.92… blazing fast. Good weather and great competition - prime conditions if we could run the right race. I went around to each of our guys and told them all the same thing: “Just get the baton around the track to ‘10.8’ and let him cook.” (“10.8” referring to our state-ranked anchor, Ayden Cothern). My track coach in high school (and a huge role model for me) Dave Carmody, used to always say if you run the 4x1 well, it should almost look like one guy running around the track, and that’s exactly what our guys did on Friday. 3 seamless handoffs put the baton in AC’s hands with a chance to go after his counterpart from Saint T, and he made the most of it. Ayden put his gifts on full display in a pretty amazing come from behind leg (check the picture above… St. T’s anchor is out of the frame with between 90 & 95 meters to go). The final result: a 1st place finish and a time of 43.13 (that prediction from last week was dead on). That’s good for a new school record (the prior record was set by Tiger Greats Dirk Washburn, Dalton Waggoner, Jordan Hahn, and Gus Lathrop in 2013), and #12 in IL2A. With 3 weeks left in the season, plenty of big things are still in play for these 4 (2 of them are freshmen and one is a sophomore, btw). Pretty nice video of the race can be found here (still need to figure out who to credit it to).
Flying Tigers Grounded, But not Before Some Great Performances
The health questions we had going into Newton would wind up being felt the most amongst our “Flying Tigers”. *Quick side note: Asst. Coach Klay Wheeler discovered a couple months back that there was a WWII-era air squadron dubbed the “Flying Tigers”, and their crest even had a lightning bolt going straight down the middle of it… We couldn’t get the t-shirts for our jump crew made fast enough.
Rex Hallam, one of the best Long Jumpers in the state, tweaked an ankle earlier in the week, and Ian Pianfetti, one of our talented freshmen, had been battling a nagging groin injury for weeks. Those injuries kept Hallam out of his first crack at the TJ, and Pianfetti out of jumping altogether. Unfortunately we would add to that list before the night was over, but not before our cats did some impressive things. Despite the discomfort in his jumping foot, Rex jumped 21’10. That’s about 3-4 inches fewer than his all-time best from last weekend, but still good enough to win the Newton Invite by over a foot.
One of the guys who wasn’t on our injury list coming into Friday, Gavyn Cothern, was coming off his huge upset win in the HJ at Edwardsville last weekend (which made him the top Freshman in Class 2A). Unfortunately at some point during that event on Friday, he aggravated the hamstring on his jumping leg. Before finishing up, he cleared 6’2 again, and barely missed on 6’4, proving last week was no fluke.
After their efforts in the field, we had serious questions about either Rex or Gavyn doing anything else for the rest of the night. Both guys are competitors, and we were going to have to make some major last minute changes to our 4x2 (more on that later), but pulling them was a no-brainer with so much at stake down the road.
We had a couple other Flying Tigers in the field Friday Night, and two of them put in all-time best performances for themselves. Ian Winkler continues to show his versatility in the jumps, hitting both 5’10 in the HJ and almost 39’ feet in the Triple. That 5’10 was his best of the season, and he just keeps getting better every week. The same can be said of Brody Runyon. He was one our guys who got thrown into the 4x2 at the last minute, and still managed to hit a personal best of 39’7 in the TJ… 40 feet is within reach. Every performance and every point will matter at Conference on Wednesday, but we have Ian and Brody marked as guys to watch.
Hough and Cooley are Warriors in the 1600
Two gutsy performances came out of the 1600m for us on Friday night, starting with Kadyn Cooley in the 1st heat. Kadyn is one of our most improved Tigers from last year to this year. He came out in the slower of the two heats and set the pace for everyone else, leading for pretty much the entirety of the race. With about 100m to go, Ramsey of Oblong-Palestine decided to make his move. In that instance, it’s often easy for a kid to cash it in after the mental exhaustion of holding down that front position, but Kadyn did no such thing. He battled the entire way, and even though Ramsey edged him out at the finish line, Kadyn made him earn every bit of it. And he set a new personal best along the way - almost 30 seconds faster than his best in 2022.
As of Thursday, we were fairly sure Holden Hough wasn’t even going to run on Friday Night, as shoulder/rib pain had kept him from training at full capacity for the past week. Thursday night he was feeling good, though, and decided he wanted to compete. He came into the race seeded first, but again, it’s hard to predict how the past week would impact him mentally, especially if someone else from the field was able to push him to the limit. In an almost mirror image of heat 1, Holden solidly controlled the vast majority of the race, and with Elder of St. Anthony playing the role of the spoiler at the end - except this time around our guy was able to hold on (by a tenth of a second). Tremendous mental toughness on Holden’s part.
Saul Jones has a Monster Evening
I wrote quite a bit about Saul Jones’s gutsy competitiveness last week, running high school track’s toughest race in the toughest of elements. This week, Saul managed to one up himself. He started his evening off by continuing the methodical march back to his old form in the 110 Highs, setting a new PR and legitimately cracking 16 seconds for the first time (he did so back in 2021, but it was hand-timed). His 15.94 vaults him to the #1 seed in the Mattoon Sectional, makes him #3 (and closing) for us since 2011, and was good for 2nd behind the extremely talented KJ Davis of Oblong-Palestine (pictured).
Then came the curveball: Gavyn Cothern’s hamstring. When I put out word that I was looking for a replacement in the 4x2, Saul stepped right up, knowing he had the 300s waiting for him not long after. Saul ran a great 3rd leg, and then got himself prepared the best he could (he had what couldn’t have been more than 15 minutes). He came in seeded 2nd behind Brilley of St. T, but Evan Baltzell from Newton wasn’t going to just let Saul have it. He built up what looked like an insurmountable lead on Saul, and I honestly thought there was no way he would have enough in the tank for a comeback. But he dug deep, and somehow managed to get himself across the finish line .06 seconds before Evan did, earning every bit of that 2nd place finish and a new personal best of 42.78 (currently good for #2 in the Mattoon Sectional and #2 for us since 2011, btw).
AC Dominates on His Way Back to the Winner’s Circle
Ayden Cothern has spent the past few weeks where he belongs, which is running against some of the top talent in the state. When you aspire to do some of things that he hopes to do, you can’t wait until the post-season to get pushed. His last two meets (Mascoutah and Edwardsville) have resulted in a couple 2nd place finishes and a broken 60 year old record. He’s also been battling a little tendonitis (or something close to it) as of late, so it’s been a good but challenging couple weeks for AC. I thought all week he could use a “get well” race - winning isn’t everything, but when you are the fastest kid in the history of your school, you expect to cross that finish line first every so often. It’s a credit to Ayden’s talent that a meet as good as the Newton Invite might be considered a “get well” meet (St. T, Newton, Mattoon, Charleston, Effingham, and numerous other schools there produce fantastic athletes every year), but Ayden put on display of just how dominant he is in this area. He pulled away early and really left no doubt, beating the 2nd place finisher, Caden Walls of Effingham, by a quarter of second. Again, that’s a lot in a race as short as the 100m, and Walls is no pushover, having previously turned in times of 11.2 and 10.9. Ayden’s time of 11.18 was very solid also, just a couple hundredths off of state-qualifying despite a slight headwind and no serious contender to push him.
As important as anything on Friday for Ayden was finishing the meet (we had concerns about the discomfort he was experiencing all the way up through Thursday), and getting through four races. Ayden’s a kid that gives it his absolute all, and you can tell he often doesn’t have much left at the end of the meet. But he came out determined to dig in and go for it on Friday Night, so much so that he came out of the gates too hot in the 200, and wound up with nothing left down the stretch. He finished 4th in a field he should have probably finished 2nd in at worst, but he learned a valuable lesson for moving forward. I’m as proud of him for this as anything.
Dorn Finishes Off a Huge Week with a New Best
No doubt in my mind, Maddox Dorn is one of my all-time favorite Tigers. We’ve spent a lot of time together working on his athleticism over the past 4 years, dating back to the COVID shutdown. As often is the case, I really got to know Maddox more so in that one on one environment than I would have in a typical team setting, and he proved himself to be a thoughtful, intelligent, super-hardworking kid. All that paid off for him on the football field, where he earned all-conference and academic all-state honors in his senior season. Over the past few months, he’s revealed more of his talents in our school’s awesome CEO program (headed up by the amazing Sheri Gray). Maddox’s communication and entrepreneurial skills are fantastic (and his product was top notch, too). Maddox wound up winning their culminating tradeshow competition on Wednesday, which was judged by numerous business leaders from the community, a huge accomplishment.
Friday, Maddox hit another milestone, tossing the discus 124', which is a new best for him. His gradual climb over the past 4 years has now gotten him to within a foot of a mark that only a handful of other Tigers have reached in the past decade. He’s now #7 in that time span, and if he can pick up a few more feet before the end of the season, he could land himself in the top 5. Maddox is a special kid, and is going to be fantastic at whatever he chooses to do in life.
Other Notes…
In total, 10 Personal or Season Bests at Newton on Friday. A big one not mentioned above was a fantastic effort from Ryan Kirby, who won his heat and cracked 58 seconds for the first time. Ryan has been a great competitor and a “whatever you need, coach” type guy all season as a Freshman. You can’t have enough guys like that on your team. More to come on Ryan in a future write up.
I alluded to our 4x2 several times above, but never actually gave a proper write-up on that group. After pulling Hallam and G. Cothern at the last minute and subbing in Runyon and Jones, it was anyone’s guess how it would turn out. Not because of ability - speed is definitely the deepest attribute on this team. But you still have to get the baton around the track. We didn’t have any drops, but two of our handoffs weren’t pretty. We still managed a 3rd place finish, and ran a 1:34.22 - faster than anything we ran last year, including our Conference winning effort at the LIC Championship.
Full Results from Newton
A (as of this posting) not-quite complete gallery from the meet can be found here. Some of the pics have been stubborn to upload. Hoping to get that corrected asap.
One of the fun things about Newton’s Invite is the Thrower’s 4x1. Our team of Zander Schrader, Maddox Dorn, Hudson Lathrop, and Jashaun McKinley pulled out an exciting victory (yeah, even our throwers are pretty fast on this team) and won the grand prize: a pizza. They went wild and had a blast with it (pictured above).
Championship season continues with the LIC Conference meet on Wednesday - the same day as I am set to publish this recap. We have been fortunate to win 3 out of the last 4 Conference Titles (not counting the lost season of 2020). But aside from the landslide win we had in 2019 (we scored twice as many points as the 2nd place team that year), every other contest has been EXTREMELY close. We won 2018 by 2 points over Robinson, Newton edged us out by 2 points in 2021, and we scored 7 more than Newton in 2022. For perspective, anything inside 10 points is basically the equivalent of winning a basketball game by 1 point… so the last several years have been barn-burners. And of course, this year is shaping up to be more of the same: my simulations have had the final difference landing somewhere inside 10 points again. We aren’t exactly 100% healthy, but our guys are all cleared to compete, and have sold out to do everything they can. I’m already a proud coach, regardless of what happens. And more than any team we’ve had, we’ve got our sights set on big things beyond Conference. #kachow