“I looked back, and I am pretty sure that this was the most event winners we’ve ever had in a meet. I don’t think we’ve ever had six first place finishes. Especially given the caliber of Union County track right now, that bodes really well,” said head coach Christopher Tafelski.
Six event winners was still not enough to cut it for Westfield in the Union County championship. With 114 points, the Blue Devils fell short of Union Catholic’s 135 points. Nevertheless, the strong performance, as Tafelski stated, points towards success at sectionals next weekend.
Tafelski said, “I was looking at the rankings for the sectionals, and we have the top seeded kid in I believe all six of those events: the 400 meter hurdles, javelin, [800], [1600], [3200], [4×400] and then add the [4×800] relay, we’re the top seed in that as well. That’s not contested at the county, but it’s contested at the sectional.”
Both Tuesday and Wednesday yielded extremely hot days for the meet, perfect weather for all athletes to post heavy-hitting performances. In the 400 meter hurdles, senior Emanuel Gayanilo took first place with a time of 53.90 seconds. Placing first, third and fifth in the 800 meter, senior Alex Valencia, junior Ryan Daly and senior Jimmy Gildea ran times of 1:53.52, 1:55.27 and 1:56.71. In a Blue-Devil-dominated 1600 race, senior Avery Keith, Daly and Valencia took the top three spots with times of 4:12.96, 4:13.12 and 4:15.38. Daly’s time is a Westfield junior record.
In the 3200, seniors Tage Mehta and Graham Korins placed first and fifth with times of 9:33.91 and 9:40.66. The 4×400 relay consisting of seniors Rowan McMahill, Noah Petrassi, Gildea and Gayanilo took first in 3:21.33.
The throws also saw great success. Junior Noah Rubenstein held Westfield’s top marks in the discus and shot put with a sixth-place, personal-best 134′ 1″ in the discus and a fourth-place 48′ 8″ in the shot. In the javelin, the Blue Devils had three out of three throwers score points. Seniors Jeremy Cruz and Max Cho, who placed first and third, both posted personal bests by multiple feet with 164′ 10″ and 163′ 6″, respectively. Junior Lincoln Meyers placed fifth with a 152′ 10″ throw.
On top of all of the first-place finishes, Westfield has point scorers right behind the top guys that contribute greatly to the team’s success in the meet as a whole.
“The depth of the quality that we have also… take the javelin for example. It wasn’t just that we had the event winner. We scored 10 more points with Max being second and Lincoln being fifth. We went 1, 2, 3 in the mile. We went 1, 3, 5 in the 800. We’ve got depth in a lot of good places. And I think that’s going to serve us really well, too,” said Tafelski, “because being able to contend for the Group 4 meet after the section, you’ve got to have your top people doing what they need to do, but you also need to qualify a lot of people there to pick up the extra finishes… That’s how you stack up and accumulate the points that it takes to win a meet like that.”
Not only does having depth help the team score more consistent points, but it helps spread out talent among different events to allow athletes to focus on their event and save energy.
“We also have the depth where, when we get to the [4×800] relay, and even possibly the [4×400] relay, we don’t have to go to the same people over and over again… There are teams that are going to have to go to the same kids over and over and over again, so those are kids that are going to have to do three or four events each in order to score the points they need to beat us,” said Tafelski. “We have more people on that level, so… I think as the meet wears on, and their kids fatigue, I think that’s where our depth is really going to serve us well.”
The Blue Devils are confident leading into next Friday and Saturday’s sectional meet at Ridge.
Tafelski said, “It’s a state meet, and you never know how it’s going to go, but I’m pretty happy with where we are.”
