Discus, one of the oldest and most historic sports in the world, is not only a huge part of Westfield’s spring track program, but it is an internationally renowned event as well. Dating back to the original Olympic games in Ancient Greece, discus is an event of tradition and strength; only the strongest and skilled throwers can succeed in this unique sport.
Discus has been around for hundreds of years, and the game has evolved greatly. Modern discus throwers spin about 1.5 times before rotating off one of their legs to throw the discus when originally, athletes would throw from an inclined pedestal without much of a momentum build up.
In discus, athletes wearing specialized throwing shoes attempt to launch a disc as far as they can in a 40 degree sector. Typically, in a solo meet, the person who throws the discus the farthest wins. However, Westfield partakes in both individual and team meets. During a team meet, the combined distance from each school’s team is recorded and whichever team has the furthest distance wins the meet.
The Blue Devil discus team is led by coach Erik Anderson and is an essential part of Westfield’s entire track program. Last year, seniors Finn Mindak and Joe McGovern placed third and fourth in the Group 4 championship, helping lead Westfield to a second place finish in this meet. Although the Blue Devils lost key throwers Mindak and McGovern, there are still plenty of familiar faces to leave a mark this year.
Junior Brenton Hatch, an important member of Westfield’s discus team, said, “Our goal is to set a decent discus relay mark. We all have different marks in mind for our own personal records. Personally, I have a mark for around 130 feet.”
Despite having big shoes to fill from last year, Anderson still has high expectations for this season: “I’d really like to win the county relays again. We’re following up the school record that we set last year; they broke it by 45 feet or something. I don’t want to say that we’re going to do that, but I’d like to get up in that 400-plus foot range.”
To prepare for meet days, the team practices with a throwing and weightlifting program. “We start out with a warm up, then typically we’ll get into some technical work drills and other things to reinforce good technical habits. That way, when we get into the circle, we’re ready to throw real, full attempts,” said Anderson. “We try not to do tons of partial reps once we get in the cage, just because there’s only one cage to throw from and we’ve got a bunch of guys over there. It makes it kind of tough to maximize our time when trying to do lots and lots of drill work.”
There are many skills involved in throwing a disc. Anderson said a strong thrower needs “general athleticism, mobility, and obviously power. You’ve got to be an athlete, and you’ve got to have really good proprioception, awareness of where your body is, because if you can’t separate lower from upper, you’re not really going to ever hit the discus with any kind of real power.”
Hatch said throwing requires “a lot of balance, explosiveness and you just need to be able to spin without falling on your ass every two seconds. That’s basically it.”
The discus team hopes to harness these skills during championship meets later on this season and keep its strong legacy alive.
