The Championship Season begins and the team continues to shape up! Still, lots more work has to be done! Several big meets and several dual meets are in the record books -- record: 1 - 1 - 1 -- and a lot more competition is scheduled here. GO CHEROKEE!
On May 6th, 2023, members of the team who did not participate in Thursday's SJTCA Elite Track and Field Meet traveled to Delsea High School for the SJTCA Open. Quite a few were surprised to see Ass't Coach Shaklee at the meet because he was expected to attend the Coronation of King Charles in England! As a direct descendant of Lord Shakleford on the Thames, and a "Peer of the Realm," he was automatically invited but he chose to honor his responsibilities here in "the colonies." As he pointed out previously, this will in no way affect his relationship with his team members . . . he prefers to be called "Shak" to reflect his "oneness" with the common people. Thanks Coach!
In the past, the SJ Open was divided into a two-day meet: Part I was the "elite" portion scheduled on a Thursday night; Part II was the "open to all" portion scheduled the following Saturday. That program continues today!
Lots of good stuff happened at the meet on Saturday! Distance Coach Shaklee sent some details directly so we'll start with his guys! "In the 1600m, Liam Tindall ran his final three laps solidly, each in 68, after the field went out conservatively! He ended up with his best 1600 of the year; and Luke Reistle ran well throughout the race and ended with a new PR! In the 800m, Enzo Carona knocked a bunch of time off his previous PR, going under 2:10 for the first time . . . way under at 2:06! [Photographer's note: great fighting finish, Enzo!] Tate Midora and Logan Bromley also set new PR's, with Tate just dipping under 2:10 for the first time! Finally, in the 4 X 800m Relay, it was a relatively short time after the Open 800m, and difficult for Enzo and Logan to double, but Liam Tindall was able to drop his PR on the second leg and Andrew Free ran a tough lead-off, though not a PR!"
Several Sprinters/Hurdlers had nice days as well! Wesley Davenport clocked PR's in both the 100m and 200m, and Vincent Ha clocked his own PR in the 100m! In the 200m, Jack Couture and Brian Magee set their own PR's, and Jack doubled with another PR in the 400m! Also in the 400m, Freshman Carlo Brown followed with his own PR! Not to be outdone, all three athletes in the 110HH clocked PR's: Jeremy Linden, Dan Raider and Kyle Perkins!
There were some nice performances among the Throwers/Jumpers too! Brody Wolfert had double PR's in the Discus and the Javelin; Austin Bird and Francisco Sandoval put PR's in the Shot; and Freshman Noah Calderon set his own PR's in the Triple and Long Jumps!
Further details at: NJ.MileSplit.
Our photographer was on the track during the meet. His pictures posted below and others are available on the District's Google site!
The first picture below is the photographer's favorite because it appears to show a young hurdler saying a "thank you" prayer: thank you for allowing me to survive the 110HH, or maybe, thank you for allowing me to set a new PR?!
On May 10th, 2023, the team traveled to Eastern Regional High School for what was expected to be a very close Dual Meet . . . and it was! [Interestingly, in the past, Hand Timed (HT) results were not posted on MileSplit as equal to Fully Automatic Timing (FAT) because of numerous inefficiencies or abuses that occurred but this HT meet appears to be recorded on MileSplit as the same as FAT. We'll see if they change that!]
Distance Coach Shaklee was the first to report on his team's excellent performance in the meet!
"The distance squad came through with a lot of points to help the team defeat Eastern 75-65 to end the dual meet season with a record of 2-1-1!
"Liam Tindall, Nick Kuenkel and Patrick Ditmars ran together and took 1st, 2nd & 3rd in the 1600. Behind them, Myron Paes established a new PR, knocking 3 seconds off of his previous best!
"Both Tommy Bromley and Tate Midora ran well in the 400, with Tommy getting back to last year's form with a fast 53.5 clocking! Tate set a new PR by 2 seconds at 54.4!
"Conor Jacob led the way from start to finish in the 800 with another sub-2:00 clocking, and Bobby Poplau, still feeling the effects of Monday's workout, was able to take 3rd place! PR's were set by Logan Bromley, Brett Yagiello, Rory Carroll and Sai Yalemanchi (running his first race of the season)!
"The meet was close and we needed BIG points in the 3200 to have a chance for the win! Patrick Ditmars did a great job of pacing his teammates, Ben Weiner, Anthony DiBatista and Luke Reistle through the race! All 3 of them set new PR's with Ben and Anthony going 1-2! Patrick took it easy over the last lap (to conserve for the 4 X 400) to simply maintain 3rd place and give us the sweep!
"The meet came down to the 4 X 400 and Conor Jacob, Nick Kuenkel, Bobby Poplau and Patrick Ditmars did not disappoint! The first three opened up a good lead and Patrick topped it off with a strong anchor to bring the team in for the win in a fast time of 3:27.9! Not bad for four distance runners!
"It was a good way to end the dual meet season. Now, on to the championships!"
Though greatly appreciated, the Distance guys were not the only ones to contribute to the victory! Among the Sprinter/Hurdler/Jumpers who picked-up important points were Wesley Davenport with a 2nd and PR in the 100m; Jack Couture with a 2nd in the 400m; Jeremy Linden with a 2nd in the 100HH; Christian Sproesser with a 3rd in the 110HH and a 2nd in the 400IH; Sam Greene, just returned from an injury, with a 1st in the HJ and an outdoor PR; Ryan Bender with a 3rd in the HJ and the LJ; Noah Colburn with a 2nd in the LJ and a 3rd in the TJ; and Azariah Cooper with a 2nd in the TJ!
Also among the scorers were these Throwers! In the Discus, Alex Goode, denied a chance to throw in last week's Elite Meet, grabbed a 1st, and Shane Sloan took 3rd! In the Javelin, Zach Ott took 1st, and Austin Lenart took 2nd; and in the Shot Put, Zack Ott returned and took 2nd, and Andrew Geisenheimer launched a huge 4-foot PR to take 3rd!
As Assistant Coach Shaklee said earlier, "It was a good way to end the dual meet season. Now, on to the championships!"
It's unusual for Dual Meet results to be posted on MileSplit but the top three places in each event are: NJ.MileSplit.
Our photographer was unavailable for this meet but here are our season pictures of the Field and Sprint/Hurdle/Jump teams! Please note that there is no season picture of the Distance team because the coach thought they are so handsome that it would be unfair to display them beside the others, like exhibiting a Maserati beside an old Ford milk truck.
On May 13th, 2023, Cherokee's elite traveled to Northern Burlington Regional High School for the Burlington County Championships and did pretty well! Several PR's and lots of "almost PR's" which should improve quite a bit as they go through the end-of-season championship meets!
As usual, Coach Shaklee reported directly on the excellent performances among his distance squad!
"The Burlington County Meet went well for the distance squad, especially considering that five of the runners were coming to the meet post-prom - Patrick Ditmars, Conor Jacob, Tommy Bromley, Andrew Free and Matteo Evola!
"The first event was the 3200 and both Liam Tindall and Ben Weiner ran well, establishing new PR's! Liam knocked 9 seconds off of his previous best and broke 10:00 for the first time to get 6th and score a point for the team! Ben finished 9th with a 7 second PR!
"Next up was the 4 X 800 with the team of Bobby Poplau, Tommy Bromley (running his first 800 in a year!), Logan Bromley and Andrew Free. All four athletes ran very well but it was not quite enough to win and we finished in 2nd place, behind Cinnaminson, with our County Meet, fastest 4 X 8 time ever! Both Andrew and Logan set new PR's with Logan dropping almost 5 seconds to go under 2:10 for the first time . . . way under at 2:05.8!
"Tate Midora dropped down to run the 400 and recorded a new FAT PR of 54.45!
"The 800 was up next and it was our best event with Patrick Ditmars, Conor Jacob and Nick Kuenkel taking 1-2-3! All three guys 'negative split' the race which says they can go even faster! Nick managed to drop 1.5 seconds from his previous PR despite getting tripped up with 400 to go!
"The highlight of the 1600 was Matteo Evola running away with the victory in the 2nd heat! He stayed with the leaders until 500 to go and then moved to the front and won the race by 9 seconds, establishing a new PR!
"The final event was the 4 X 400 Relay and it was very exciting as four teams were in contention the whole race! In fact, after Conor Jacob, Nick Kuenkel and Bobby Poplau ran, and Bobby gave the baton to Patrick Ditmars, all four teams were within a stride of each other! Conor and Nick established new PR's and Bobby was only 2 tenths behind his! Patrick took the lead on the backstretch and pulled away over the final 200 to bring the team in 1st with a new PR of his own and his first sub-50 clocking, at 49.7!
"Overall, Cherokee finished 4th in the team competition with 53 points (behind Rancocas Valley, Cinnaminson and Willingboro). The distance team did its part, scoring 43 of the team's points!"
Among the Sprinters/Hurdlers/Jumpers, Wesley Davenport took 9th in both the 100m and 200m; Murad Campfield took 35th in the 100m, set a PR and finished a-blink-of-an-eye behind Brian Mitchell in 34th! Jack Couture finished the 400m in 10th and missed a new PR by hundreds of a second! Already mentioned in the distance remarks, Tate Midora ran a decent 400m a few days earlier and, all of a sudden, he ended up a Sprinter in the 400m, setting a new FAT PR! In the 110HH, Jeremy Linden cracked more wood than a lumberjack but made it through alive; and both Sam Green and Ryan Bender set official outdoor PR's in the High Jump, and look ready to do something extra special in the future!
Finally, among the Throwers, Zach Ott launched a huge PR in the Javelin and finished 3rd in the competition; Dylan Grau put his best Shot of the season, only an inch or so under his PR; and Francisco Sandoval put his best Shot ever, over 3 feet past his previous PR!
Official details at: NJ.MileSplit.
Our photographer was there and took many pictures, some of which are posted below, and they and the rest are posted on the District's Google site!
On May 17th, 2023, almost all of our distance boyos competed in the Holmdel Twilight Series: The Royale Rumble (1600m) and, despite some cold and windy conditions for May, quite a few clocked PR's while others decided to run a tad slower and give the photographer more time for quality pictures! Coach Shaklee will summarize the night's performances soon but here are some of our photographer's works to admire! These and other pictures are available on the District's Google site!
Details, including pictures from NJ.MileSplit's photographer (which can be copied and pasted) and videos, at: NJ.MileSplit.
Special thanks to Andrew Free for his help to the photographer at the meet!
On May 22nd, 2023, specific members of the Distance team enjoyed another cool evening run on at the Haddonfield Distance Night! Seventeen guys competed in one of three races -- the 800m, 1600m and the 3200m -- and 12 out of 16 set new Personal Records!
In the 800m, Enzo Corona, Andrew Free, Logan Bromley, Tate Midora and Sam Wright clocked new PR's; while in the 1600m, Luke Reistle, Brett Yagiello, Myron Paes, Ethan Weisneberg, Rory Carroll, Josh Lowery and Sai Barghav Yelmanchi did the same! You Go GUYS!
Official details and race videos at: NJ. MileSplit.
Our photographer was available and shot all of the races. Here are some of his pictures and they and the rest are available at the District's Google site!
On May 23rd, 2023, the team traveled to Rancocas Valley Regional High School for the Olympic Conference Championships (Patriot Division). In the past, the Conference Team Championship was determined there but now only the top individual or relay team in each event in the Division is identified and the "Conference All-Stars" are named!
For Cherokee this year, there was only one individual -- Patrick Ditmars 1:56.0 in the Open 800m -- and one relay team -- Tommy Bromley, Logan Bromley, Tate Midora and Enzo Corona -- 8:22.21 in the 4 X 800m Relay -- to take ALL-Star Honors!
Besides the All-Stars, Nick Kuenkel and Bobby Paulau, both close to their all-time PR's, took 2nd and 5th in the Open 800m; and Andrew Free and Tate Midero took 7th and 8th, both with PR's, in the 3200m!
Details, videos, pictures, etc. at: NJ.MileSplit!
Our photographer was available for the meet but was only able to shoot the finish line and two of our Long Jumpers. See some of his pictures below and they and the rest are available at the District's Google site!
On May 24th, 2023, Coach Hoffman took three of Cherokee's Throwers to another "last chance opportunity," this time at Delsea H.S.: The 3rd Annual Crusader Field Meet, 2023.
Two Sophomores, Francisco Sandoval and Jordan Stone threw the Discus, and while neither reached the Award Stand, Francisco produced PR's in both the Discus and the Shot! Jordan and Thomas Kent, a Senior who came out for the Shot late this year, failed to meet their own PR standards.
Detailed results at: NJ.MileSplit.
Our photographer and MileSplit's were unavailable for this meet.
On May 25th, 2023, Cherokee sponsored one final, regular meet for Spring, 2023, and huge numbers, including many Cherokee athletes, took advantage of the opportunity!
Several distance guys probably did a tad too much racing lately but several finished the regular season with nice PR's, and a few with better-than-nice PR's! Check out the performances of Liam Tindall, Matteo Evola, Tate Midera, Andrew Free and Enzo Corona!
Some of our Sprinters/Hurdlers made some progress as well, including Cherokee's top sprinter, Wesley Davenport; and Jack Couture and Brian Magee; Hurdlers Jeremy Linden, Liam McCloskey, Kyle Perkins and Daniel Raider; and Freshman Sprinter Carlo Brown who missed it by a few tenths of a second!
Finally, a few Throwers impressed as well in this, their final regular meet! Dominic Eleftheriou PR'd in the Shot; Andrew Geisenheimer did the same in the Discus; and both Brody Ludman and Francisco Sandoval improved on their best in the Javelin!
Our photographer was unavailable for this meet. The results are posted at NJ.MileSplit.