2023 Olney Invite Recap

One of my favorite coaches in high school track and field recently said something along the lines of, “When you have high expectations, the price is that you are going to fall short of them and fail at times”. He also spoke about the ups and downs of this sport, and the fact that you can’t allow yourself to get too high or too low. You aren’t going to PR every meet, you aren’t going to win every race, and you aren’t going to nail every handoff. To go along with that, we spend a lot of time talking about perspective with our kids. We certainly don’t preach excuses… but whenever possible we look for the positive, and whether we fail or succeed, we try to learn from it and get better.

Thursday’s Olney Invite was a lot of things. It was at times exhilarating and at times frustrating. There were moments we were celebrating and others when we were humbled (on a few occasions within the same race). But one thing was for sure: Thursday was a beginning, and for the most part, it was an exciting one.

Cothern Dominates in Opener

After a monster indoor season that concluded with a 3rd place finish at IL Top Times, Ayden had to wait almost two weeks to get the opportunity to follow it up thanks to weather. Obviously chilly temps and a headwind weren’t the ideal way to kick things off, but that’s track in Southern Illinois. We knew we weren’t probably going to see any broken records in the sprints, but AC made the most of the opportunity, clearly separating himself from a field that would have likely pushed him to the brink last spring. His growth was evident in the results, too. Despite the conditions and pulling away from the field, his 11.24 was the fastest 100m he’s ever been clocked at on FAT. Last year, on a hot day at Charleston, and chasing Keyhea of MTZ (an eventual all-stater), Ayden turned in an 11.33. When a sub-optimal day is as good or better than your previous high water mark, that’s a good sign for things to come. And that 11.24 is just a little over a tenth off the IHSA Qualifying Standard. I don’t like to make predictions, but it looks like health and good conditions are the only things that can or will delay a huge performance for AC.

Tigers Go 1/3 in the Long Jump

Even when he doesn't have his best stuff, Rex Hallam is going to be in the hunt at the Long Jump pit almost anywhere we go. Such was the case @ the Olney Invite... Rex jumped under 21 feet for the first time this season, but his best that day (20'10) was good enough to bring home a 1st place finish. Even in less than ideal conditions, Rex is a competitor, and he wanted more. I suspect we'll see it Friday at Mascoutah.

One of the big highlights of the meet was Freshman Ian Pianfetti announcing his presence in the Long Jump. Pianfetti (who would have broken the Middle School record in LJ last year if not for his teammate Gavyn Cothern), struggled last week in his first outing, scratching on all 4 attempts (he'd gotten very little work up to that point). To say he was frustrated would have been an understatement. For my money, there is absolutely nothing better in sports than watching a young athlete bounce back from adversity. Ian did just that at our invite, jumping 19'5.5 and netting a 3rd place finish. Super proud of the kid.

Hough Continues to Build Steam

Maybe more than any athlete I've ever had, Holden Hough has been taking the "slow burn" approach to his senior season. The kid has had more than his fair share of ups and downs over the past 3+ years... a pandemic, various illnesses, injuries. As excellent as he's been, he's never gotten to run in a Conference Championship for us. He even had to sit out the XC post-season this fall due to illness. We always want our guys at their best in May; Holden is doing everything he can to make sure that is his reality. Thursday night, he showed he's right on track. Putting 10 seconds between himself and the rest of the field in the 1600, he clocked in at 4:38 (his new PR), and looked extremely strong doing it. Big things to come for Mr. Hough.

Sprint Relays Dominate... and Struggle

Anyone who follows us knows that we have high hopes for our sprint relays this season.  Based on what we saw in the pre-season, both our 4x1 and 4x2 relays realistically go about 6-7 guys deep, are a threat to break our 10 year old school records on any given night, and have a legit chance to make noise in the post-season. We were down two of those guys Thursday (Jones & Runyon), and spread ourselves even a bit more thin on the 4x2 in the hopes of winning both the Varsity and F/S relays. Regardless of how well your lineups are locked in, early season handoffs are always going to be a wild ride. I have never had my guys do 1,000 handoffs in practice, and I never will. We try to recreate the intensity and high stakes in practice that you are going to get in a meet - and you don’t get any re-dos in a meet. And as much as we try to re-create those meet conditions, there is no substitute for the “game speed” of a relay. These guys have to get to know each other in those specific conditions. Bottom line, you expect things to be a little ugly in early April… but a whole lot of ugly fell on us Thursday Night.

Our 4x1, missing our leadoff guy (Jones), was the cleanest of our 3 sprint relay teams, and they had exactly zero great handoffs. Our two freshmen (G. Cothern & Pianfetti), know each other as well as anyone on the team… they handed off to one another on our record breaking MS team last spring). They had the best handoff out of the group, and Pianfetti stepped on Cothern’s foot. Both our #2 and #3 exchanges featured early takeoffs, with #3 almost being a DQ, but we managed to put the rest of the field away by half a second, and come within 4 tenths of our school record.

The F/S 4x2 was our first relay of the day to see a cat actually go down. Reed Klingler is a fantastic dual sport athlete (he plays baseball as well), and one side effect of that is limited time to work on things like handoffs. A guy going down is partially the result of poor timing, but it can also be caused by effort… Reed gave it his all and paid the price. Even so, that exchange pretty much brought our team to a standstill. We weren’t DQ’d, but it cost us first place.

Lastly, our Varsity 4x2. 10 years ago, the unreal group of Washburn, Waggoner, Hahn, & Lathrop took down what was at the time a 50 year old record. Thursday night, our guys showed they are in the hunt, and it may come sooner than we thought. Because of the aforementioned absences and effort to construct a competitive F/S team, our Varsity 4x2 faced the most upheaval, and it showed. Not in terms of ability… we pretty clearly pulled away from the field. But 2 of our 3 exchanges saw the passer go down. Both of those exchanges could have probably gotten us DQ’d, but it only took one. We didn’t know for sure until it was all over, so our guys finished out the race - somewhere in the neighborhood of 1:32 (when you get disqualified, you don’t get a time)… our 2013 team set the record with a 1:31.27.

Again, I don’t like to make predictions, but when these cats settle in and get a good day to run, look out.

Rudolphi Shows Some Serious Signs in the Hurdles

Caleb Rudolphi is one of my favorite stories on this team. I started trying to get him out for track the first time I saw him run at Get Quick the summer before his Freshman year. It took over 2 years for that to finally become a reality (he showed up unexpectedly the first day of practice last season), and ever since he consistently proves himself as one of our most improved athletes. This season he’s returned with an extra step (his avg speed has gone up almost 1.5mph since last spring) and a new confidence. A variety of conflicts have kept him out prior to the Olney Invite, but with Saul Jones out, Caleb came ready to compete. In the 110 hurdles, Caleb came firing out of the gates, and looked absolutely fantastic through 7 hurdles. He looked poised for a top 3 finish, but he caught one of the final hurdles and went down hard - both hurdle races are amazing events, but can be cruel and unforgiving. Caleb got up and finished, but walked away pretty frustrated (and a little banged up).

He refused to let that race define him, though, and came back with a even more intensity in the 300 hurdles. His 44.11 was a full 2 seconds better than his best from last season, and the temps were pretty frigid at that point. Caleb was definitely responsible for one of the biggest highlights of the evening… excited to see what he does with the rest of his senior campaign.

Winkler Continues to Grow as a Double Threat in the Jumps

We all knew “Wink” was a tremendous athlete with incredible bounce, and that he would be an explosive and versatile threat for us once he started to get his bearings. But what I’ve learned in my first experience actually getting to work with Ian is that part of what makes him a great athlete is just how competitive he is. Within a few weeks of joining the team he crossed the 40 foot barrier in the Triple Jump, but he’s already greedy for more… and he’s taken on High Jump duties now as well. He placed 4th in both the High Jump and Triple Jump Thursday night with marks that fell below his best (a common theme for all athletes on that night). You always want to perform your best, but I also love seeing how an athlete responds in those situations, and Ian showed above all else his desire to compete. We are lucky to have him with us.

The Return of Hud

Hudson Lathrop has done it all for us the past few years: thrown, run on relays, and even pole vaulted. Last year he was our best vaulter, finishing 3rd at the LIC Championship meet. Hud isn’t built like a traditional vaulter… he was a beast of a running back and d-lineman for us in the fall, and he looks the part. We thought his talents might translate well out to the rings (and they have), but he came to me last week making the argument that we have other guys that can do what he does as a thrower, but we’re young and inexperienced in PV - and credit to him… he hit the nail on the head. Our new vault “consultant”, Robert Wells (who we are extremely lucky to have), immediately let me know that Hud is where he needs to be. Thursday night he placed 5th in one of the more competitive fields we’ve had at the Olney Invite in a while, clearing 10’6. He’s obviously had limited practice time to this point, and I’m excited to see what he does from here.

Other Notes

• Team scores this early in the season, especially on Easter Weekend, are about as easy to predict as the weather. Even so, we came in hoping to be a bit more competitive in the final standings. Absences, mistakes, and injury wound up being too much for us to overcome, but we still have very high hopes for Conference if we get fully healthy and stay that way.

• Thursday wasn’t an ideal night for setting records, but we still dropped 10 new personal bests:

  • J. Hough, Derome, & Zwilling (400)

  • Cooley (800)

  • H. Hough & Stevens (1600m)

  • Rudolphi (300H)

  • Dorn (Shot & Disc) & Wease (Disc)

• We honored our Seniors Thursday, 12 in all. We will undoubtedly talk about these fellas a ton as the year goes along and after their time as Tigers end, but for now I’ll just say they are an extremely special group.

• Full results for the Olney Invite can be found here.

• A limited gallery of pics from the invite is posted here. The responsibilities of running an invite made photography pretty difficult.

• Our JV crew went to Mattoon on a less than ideal day last Tuesday as well (high speed winds cancelled pole vault and made everything else pretty miserable, but our kids competed extremely well and set a handful of new personal records. You can check those results here.