Like the Winter, the Early Spring Track Season is a time of learning skills, developing strength, confidence and experience, dropping repeated PR's, and preparing for the Championship Season! Well, we're here, the Early Championship Season: largely invitational and/or local, some as challenging as "the bigs" (with huge "bragging rights" like the Penn Relays) -- but not the same as the State Championships and Nationals at the end! A grueling and exhausting period . . . ! GO CHIEFS!
On April 22nd, 2024, Cherokee traveled to Lenape Regional H.S. for their second Dual Meet of the season and came home victorious!
As noted before, the Dual Meets are largely unimportant in the grand scheme of things and coaches often use them for training purposes. This time, there was no FAT so the results weren't reported to MileSplit and. even though Coach Shaklee was busy preparing for the up-coming Penn Relays, he sent the following:
"The team improved its dual meet record to 2 wins and 0 losses when it beat Lenape on Monday, April 22nd! The distance team went above and beyond to score a grand total of 42 points!
"Liam Tindall, Ben Weiner and Sean Sooy swept 1-2-3 in the 1600 to get it started, with Silas Matteson in 4th as well!
"Next up, Bobby Poplau, Nick Kuenkel and Ben Realley moved down to the 400's to sweep that event, with Ben just nipping the top Lenape runner at the line in a new PR! On top of that, Matteo Evola won the second heat!
"In the 800, Tate Midora, Enzo Corona and Logan Bromley swept the first three spots. In addition, nine others set new PR's with Myron Paes leading the way with his win in the second heat! Also setting PR's were: Bruce Novoa, Leo Vyvyan, Gavin Danielewicz, Noah Pirrotta, Sam Wright, Max Harada, Charlie Wasserott and Connor Staff.
"Six distance runners ran the 200 to work on some speed and all of them set new PR's with Bobby Poplau taking third! Others PR's were set by Matteo Evola, Nick Kuenkel, Tate Midora, Ben Realley and Logan Bromley!
"Anthony DiBatista, Liam Deimler and Andrew Free went 1-2-3 in the 3200 to take those nine points, giving the distance squad 37 going into the 4 x 400 Relay. All four runners on the varsity relay were distance guys - Ben Realley, Nick Kuenkel, Tate Midora and Bobby Poplau - and they easily won the event for another five points for the team, with Tate establishing a new PR in the process! Other PR's in the JV 4 x 400 were set by Enzo Corona, Andrew Free, Liam Tindall, Sean Sooy, Luke Reistle, Leo Vyvyan, Myron Paes, Bruce Novoa, Silas Matteson, Liam Daimler, Gavin Danielewicz, Max Harada, Charlie Wasserott, Noah Pirrotta, Connor Staff, Sam Wright and Jonathan Merkel!"
Haven't heard from the Throws or Sprint coaches but it was obvious from our photographer's remarks that the Throwers did well!
Our photographer was there mostly to shoot the Throwers but he caught some of the High Jump and random track passers-by as well! Here are all the pics on our Google site!.
On April 26th and April 27th, 2024, separate parts of the team traveled to the craziest mid-season track meet on the planet: The Penn Relays Carnival! Thousands of athletes, from elementary to post-college, pass through the gates over three days to compete in everything "Track and Field," and winning something remains with you for the rest of your life!
Coach Shaklee remembers the days when he ran there in high school and college -- it was harder then because it still had a dirt track -- and, later as Head Coach or Assistant Coach since 1998, he remembers taking his athletes there! His ancient memories and our website offer a "history of Cherokee's boys at the Penn Relays" and he used them to review the performances of his boys at: Penn!
Coach Shaklee sent his view of his Distance team's performances at Penn:
"Eight distance runners from the team were entered in the Penn Relays. The 4 x 400 squad consisted of Tate Midora, Matteo Evola, Enzo Corona and Andrew Free. They were assigned to an early Saturday heat which went off at 8:50 with temperatures around 50. Despite the chill, the team ran well to finish second in their heat with Matteo Evola passing three teams on the second leg to hand off in first with a new PR of 51.72!
"Cherokee had also qualified for the 4 x 800 based on our time of 7:53.90 run in the winter. Seventy-two total teams qualify (36 in the small school division and 36 in the large school division) and 4 heats are run on Friday morning with the top twelve making it to the Championship of America race on Saturday afternoon at the height of the relays. We were in the first large school heat which turned out to be the best heat by far with eight of the twelve qualifiers for the Championship coming from that heat. Nick Kuenkel led off and, despite a brutal physical start, was able to fight his way to a 1:56.93 clocking, handing off in sixth but within a half second of second place and a little over a second behind the leader! Freshman, Ben Realley didn't let the pressure get to him and he ran an aggressive second leg, giving the baton to Logan Bromley in fifth place with a PR clocking of 1:58.86! Logan moved us up into fourth with his own PR, an identical time to Ben's - 1:58.86! When Bobby got the baton in fourth, he was five seconds behind the third place team and was uncertain of his pace early on, consequently running a conservative first lap. When several other teams caught up to us, Bobby closed well over the last 200 to keep us in fourth with his split of 1:56.55. The total time of 7:51.14 bettered our winter race time by over two seconds and held up as the fourth fastest time out of all four heats to qualify us for the Championship of America 4 x 800 on Saturday afternoon!
"With thousands of fans in the stadium, the boys lined up for the championship with a lot of nervous energy! Nick again led off but found himself in the back of the pack for most of the race. He stayed close and finally was able to move out on the homestretch to hand-off in fifth place at 1:57.19. On the second leg, although Ben ran well and set another new PR at 1:58.71, three other teams went by him and we were in eight at the hand-off to Logan. Logan ran a solid third leg - 2:00.96 - to keep us in eight at the hand-off to Bobby. Bobby went out aggressively, working to catch the teams in front of us. Although he came through the 400 very quickly, he did not catch anyone until the second lap when he moved past one of the seven in front of us to secure seventh place with a fine split of 1:53.42 to give us a total time of 7:50.31!
"Although not what we had hoped for, it was still a good effort from all! Not only is it the fastest time in New Jersey this season (we beat two other NJ teams in the final!) but it is one of the fastest times ever run by a Cherokee team, and it tied this group with the team from 1998 for the best finish in the Championship of America 4 x 800 at Penn!
"This coming week is busy with the Holmdel Night of 3200s coming up on Tuesday, the South Jersey Elite Meet on Thursday, the Trial of Miles at Icahn on Friday and the South Jersey Open on Saturday! We plan to take the successes of this past week at Lenape and Penn and build on them as we move forward!"
A few photos and a cell phone video from Penn can be found here: Penn Relays.
On April 26th, Sports Columnist, Reuben Frank, reported on Cherokee's four in the preliminary 4 X 800m Relay: senior Nick Kuenkel, freshman Ben Realley, sophomore Logan Bromley and senior Bobby Poplau finishing in a 4th place 7:51.14 and advancing to the 4 X 800m Championship of America! See: Frank.
PA.MileSplit and NJ.MileSplit combined their resources and the Meet Site is chock-full of articles, results, pictures and Videos from the meet, including a sparkling interview with Cherokee's 4 x 8 team!
Our photographer was unavailable but he skimmed online sources and found the following pictures. The picture of Logan was damaged by his lightening speed past their photographer's lens. The photographer asked that all runners slow down if they want great pictures . . . and who wouldn't?!
Coach Shaklee took most of his squad to the Holmdel Night of 3200's and was pleased with the results, even without his two top distance runners, Nick Kuenkel and Bobby Poplau, and Matteo Evola! Here is his take:
The distance squad traveled to Holmdel High School on Tuesday, April 30th for the annual Holmdel Night of 3200s. Although a long trip and a late night, the results made it all worthwhile! Of the 21 athletes racing, 17 set new personal records! Those were:
Ben Realley, Logan Bromley, Enzo Corona, Sean Sooy, Ben Weiner, Tate Midora, Luke Reistle, Liam Deimler, Leo Vyvyan, Bruce Novoa, Myron Paes, Gavin Danielewicz, Noah Pirrotta, Sam Wright, Max Harada, Connor Staff and Jonathan Merkel.
Although we consider any PR a highlight, there were several that stood out:
We had two heat winners, Enzo Corona and Tate Midora! Both saw significant improvement over their previous best times (40 sec for Enzo, 42 sec for Tate) and both ran strategically perfect races, closing with very fast last laps!
Three others came very close to winning their heats and also ran close to perfect races - Ben Realley, Logan Bromley and Max Harada! In heat 4, Max covered the moves made by the leader and challenged him the entire last lap, narrowly losing in the last straight but never giving up! Ben and Logan both ran awesome races in heat 18 and both closed extremely well to almost catch the heat leader, Elijah Whittaker of Glassboro, at the line! Their times of 9:21.01 and 9:21.24 were a blink away from first and were big PRs! Ben's performance makes him the fastest freshman in the state and the South Jersey freshman record holder in the event, knocking 6 seconds off of the previous record set by his teammate, Nick Kuenkel in 2021! He is now tenth on the All-Time Cherokee List! Logan's performance puts him at number two on the state sophomore list and eleventh on the All-Time Cherokee List! Much more can be found in Reuben Frank's blog post - Frank!
In addition, Noah Pirrotta, 9, had the largest improvement, dropping over a minute from his time run at the Cherokee Night of 3200s and breaking 12:00 for the first time! Also dropping under 12:00 for the first time was junior, Sam Wright!
Details at: NJ.MileSplit. Coverage includes results, photos and videos! Besides the pictures by our photographer, there is a number of Cherokee pictures posted by Tom Smith, a professional photographer and friend of Cherokee at Smith on MileSplit.
In addition, our photographer included the Marlton Middle School race at Holmdel and those pictures can be found at our Google site. In addition, when things quiet down a tad, he will copy Tom Smith's Middle School pictures onto the Google site as well.
Speaking of the Google site, all of our photographer's pictures are available at: Holmdel Cherokee pics.
A linked article by Jim Lambert featured the many sub-10 runners at the meet and the final part featured Cherokee's performance and gave some love to a star in Cherokee's future! NJ.MileSplit.
On May 2nd, 2024, quite a few of Cherokee's "elite" qualified for the South Jersey Elite Meet, a meet that now sets standards to be reached before any athlete qualifies for the meet. In the past, the quality of the meet was harmed because it seemed like any mother could indicate that her son or daughter was "great" and he/she was admitted! The meet took too long on a school night and the results were often compromised! Last night was different!
Coach Shaklee sent the following report on the few distance guys -- they just raced at Holmdel! -- he entered into the meet. "The distance squad had four athletes racing at the South Jersey Elite Meet on May 2nd at Delsea High School.
"We have raced a lot recently - Lenape dual, Penn Relays, Holmdel Night of 3200s - and the coach was concerned that this might be one meet too many. As it turned out, the four runners acquitted themselves quite well!
"In the 1600, Freshman, Ben Realley, placed 5th running a time just a bit slower than his converted PR from the Westfield Meet mile. Yes, it appears that Ben was somewhat fatigued from all the racing, yet he never gave into it and came through with a good performance!
"Logan Bromley, Tate Midora and Matteo Evola all raced the 800. They were all in heat 1 of 2 heats. The pace went out conservatively but picked up quite a bit on lap two. Logan fought down the homestretch with a Deptford athlete and narrowly held him off at the line to win the heat in a PR of 1:58.20, placing 4th overall! Tate set a new PR as well and came close to breaking the 2:00 barrier at 2:00.53! Although Matteo did not set a new PR, he did run his fastest 800 of the year to date, showing that he is definitely moving in the right direction!"
Further details can be found at NJ.MileSplit.
Our photographer was at the meet and here are some pictures from the 5 PM Throwers part. He was later banded from the Throws area because the school's AD throught he might be hit by one of the Throwers! At 6 PM, when the track events began, the runners finished "out of the fiery setting sun" and decent pictures were almost impossible; and after the sun went down, the stadium lights illuminated the football field but no races finished on the football field! Still, he did his best and the pictures below and the others he took are available at our Google site,
On May 3rd, Coach Shaklee entered Bobby Poplau to an unusually challenging meet in New York City to test his skill in the mile against top competitors and to make some judgments about which race he should focus on for the rest of the season, the 800m or the 1600m. He sent us this summary of the experience:
"Bobby Poplau made the most of his long bus ride to Randall's Island in Manhattan for the Trial of Miles at Icahn Stadium! As one of fourteen athletes to make the seeded heat, he knew he would face the best competition he had ever run against. The top three finishers from the New Balance Indoor Nationals were in the race as well as several others who had already run significantly under 4:10 for the mile! In fact, Bobby's seed time of 4:15.12 was only faster than one of the other competitors, and then only by about a tenth of a second!
"The race had a pacer who was tasked with taking it out through the 800 in 1:58. Although, they were slightly off that pace, it was still very fast and Bobby, hanging on in last place, came through 880 yards in 2:06.10. The third lap was key to a fast race and, to his credit, Bobby held on even though he was running in uncharted territory. With a lap to go, the clock read 3:10.63. Although he was in a world of hurt, he kept focused and closed admirably to take tenth in 4:13.08! That converts to 4:11.61, just narrowly taking down the previous school record set by Shawn Wilson when he took 3rd at the Holmdel Royal Rumble eleven years ago! The top three milers in school history have set themselves apart (Marc Pelerin is third with his 4:11.86 converted from the mile - 4:13.33 - he ran to take 6th at the Adidas Outdoor Nationals twenty-two years ago)! The three of them are all over three and a half seconds in front of anyone else on the Cherokee 1600 list!
"Congratulations to Bobby on a tough race and another new school record to go with his 800 record set earlier this year! He is also a member of the school record 4 X 800 Meter Relay!
"Now, on to the championship season! It will be fun to see what Bobby can do on the track over the next month!"
Further details at: NJ.MileSplit.
Reuben Frank reported on Peyton Shute's excellent performance in the race but the end of the article comments on Bobby's race and also includes the usual historical lists that Reuben always includes: SJ Track Blog.
In an interview with a well-respected sports reporter, Bobby was asked "how fast did you intend to go in your school-record-breaking races?" Bobby was said to reply, "Only as fast as I had to to set the record!" Less than a second separated him from the two previous record-holders, Marc Pelerin and Shawn Wilson.
Our photographer was unavailable so Coach Shaklee took over the picture-taking responsibilities! Some say "Shaklee is to sports photography as Ansel Adams was to American landscapes!" and we're sure you'll agree when you see his work from Ichan Stadium! That said, not sure why he pictured Bobby in the absolute rear of the pack, pictured him in an odd kitchen apren. etc . . . but commoners must not argue with the artist's compositions!
Years ago, the SJTCA divided the SJ Open into two parts, the elite portion scheduled on Thursday night and the Open itself on Saturday. It started badly because there were really no enforced standards for the "elite" portion of the meet but, lately, because NJ.MileSplit posts the results, it is much better! The SJ Open portion of the meet was much better too, if it didn't rain!
Coach Shaklee sent his view of the meet:
"Twelve Cherokee distance athletes ran in the South Jersey Open on Saturday, May 4th. While the weather did not cooperate (a cold rain was present for most of the meet), several of the runners still managed to do quite well!
"In the 1600, Ben Weiner placed 17th with a new PR of 4:38.53, while Silas Matteson also set a new PR of 4:53.62!
"Tate Midora and Matteo Evola moved down to the 400 after racing the 800 two days earlier at the SJ Elite Meet! The event was not run in lanes and Matteo was impeded and ended up at the back of the pack in the first turn while Tate had to deal with a good amount of contact to secure a spot closer to the front. Tate moved up nicely over the last 100 and recorded a MileSplit PR (not quite as fast as his relay time from last week).
"Freshman, Gavin Danielewicz, ran an aggressive 800 and held on nicely to knock five seconds off of his previous best!
"Finally, the 4 X 800 Relay ran when the rain was at its heaviest, and Liam Deimler, Bruce Novoa, Leo Vyvyan and Myron Paes, secured a tenth place finish with Liam setting a new 800 PR on the lead-off leg!"
The operation of the meet was clearly affected to the point where the Field events were canceled during the meet because of safety concerns. Haven't heard from the other coaches yet but the meet details are available at: NJ.MileSplit.
Our photographer was available through the meet and never complained about the weather! His mother was a tough old doll who tolerated none of that from her young man, and Coach Shaklee is much the same, though his Mom at 93 is still a sturdy Western gal who keeps high standards for her son! Here are some soggy pictures from the meet and they and the others are available at our Google site! Be sure to thank our photographer for his efforts!
Wow! Incredible score for both teams! But great job for Cherokee! Cherokee - 69, Rancocas Valley - 71! . . . Now which golf course was that?
On May 8th, 2024, Cherokee hosted Rancocas Valley at our home course and, while no record was sent to MileSplit, details are forthcoming!
Our photographer was there and took quite a few pictures, some of which are posted here and then they and many others are posted on the District's Google site. Don't forget to introduce yourself and thank the photographer: despite what your mother says, you're really not as good looking as he makes you look!
