Blue Devil runners have found massive success over the past few years and have continued to add to their lengthy list of accolades this winter. Westfield boys winter track closed out their season last weekend, concluding at the New Balance Nationals Indoor event in Boston, MA. The team performed spectacularly in Boston as well as throughout the season.
At Nationals, Westfield’s runners set five new school records and placed in multiple events. In the 4×800 relay, sophomore Kaleb Stoeckmann, senior Jimmy Gildea, junior Ryan Daly and senior Alex Valencia ran a 7 minute 46.46 seconds time to cement themselves as national champions in that event, while also setting a new Westfield school record. Valencia’s anchor leg of 1:54.98 held off the second place DC Cadets by less than half a second. Westfield’s total split was 1:59-1:57-1:54-1:54.
Valencia’s leg was the highlight and what ultimately made Westfield into National Champions of the 4×800, but the previous times of his teammates were what put him close enough to edge out his competition. He describes his experience at Nationals as “Pretty surreal. It was a great season for the team, we knew we could get it done. It felt really nice to achieve what we’ve always wanted to do, it was amazing.”
One of these teammates that set up for Valencia’s final leg was Stoeckmann, who ran the second leg for Westfield. Tafelski commented on him, saying, “Guys are always learning. Guys who maybe have never been to a sectional meet before, guys like Noah, Brenton [Hatch], or a kid like Kaleb Stoeckmann. Last year he was a 2:08 800 runner and this year he ran 1:57.” Without this 11 second improvement, Westfield may not have come home from Boston as National Champions.
Valencia and Gildea were joined by fellow seniors Emanuel Gayanilo and Princeton commit Avery Keith in Boston for the distance medley relay, in which four runners run legs of 1200 meters, 400 meters, 800 meters and 1600 meters. Valencia ran the 1200, Gayanilo the 400, Gildea the 800 and Keith anchored with the 1600. The four runners cumulatively ran a 10:01.92, setting a new WHS record and securing second place. Keith’s 1600 meter time of 4:09.49 also set a school record.
More school records were set in the 4×400 and the 4×200. Senior Rowan McMahill and Noah Petrassi joined Daly and Gayanilo for the 4×400, in which they placed ninth at Nationals and set a new school record with a time of 3:20.89. McMahill also set a school record for the 200 with his leg of 21.69 during the 4×200.
Head coach Chris Tafelski, naming the team’s most notable achievement all season, said, “It would be hard to not say the national meet. You set a school record in three relays, you win one, you’re second in the other by half a second. And those school records are big school records. The teams that had those records in the past, our 4×400 school record was held by a team that won the Meet of Champions in the 4×400. Those are no slouch teams. So that was a big deal.”
Alongside the great accomplishment of Nationals, Tafelski noted the team’s success throughout the entire season: “We advanced 15 or 16 guys to the state meet. We advanced 11 guys to the Meet of Champions. We brought 16 guys to nationals. The fact that we had that many people involved all the way, I think that’s probably just as good as setting school records and winning national races.”
Aside from the team’s standout performance at New Balance Nationals Indoor, they have accomplished a lot more locally. Westfield boasts two event champions from the Union County Championship, with Valencia in the 1600-meter and Keith in the 3200-meter. Keith also set a new school record in that event. During state sectionals there were 4 event champions: Gayanilo in the 400-meter, Keith in the 3200, Valencia in the 800 and the 4×400 relay composed of Gayanilo, Petrassi, Gildea and McMahill.
Tafelski was particularly proud of his team’s performance in the sectional meet: “We scored 97 points to win the section which is a meet record. No team has ever scored that many points to win a sectional meet. You can point to guys like Gildea and Avery and Valencia and Tage, and the guys like that. The names that everybody remembers from cross country. But really that comes down to having a guy like Caleb score or a guy like Del Re who missed all of last year. He scored. He’s the third fastest 55 dash guy we’ve ever had. And those are the extra points that we probably wouldn’t have won the sectional meet without them, but that makes the meet really special.”
At the NJ Meet of Champions, 11 Blue Devils qualified and all came home medalists. The individual medalists were Keith second and Daly seventh in the 1600, Valencia fifth in the 800 and senior Tage Mehta sixth in the 3200. There were two relays that took home medals, with the 4×800 of Christian Buonopane, and seniors Eamon Mason, Graham Korins and Hamilton placing 6th and the 4×400 of McMahill, Petrassi, Daly and Gayanilo placing eighth.
Much of the team’s success this season can be attributed to their chemistry on and off the track. Despite all of his records and achievements, Valencia cites his most memorable moments of the season to be “Just hanging out with my teammates, after a lot of the meets we’d go back to Kehler and play spikeball, or to one of our houses and just hangout. It’s just so much fun being able to hang out with these people that I spend so much time with and be able to do things outside of the sport.”
Team chemistry and leadership was hugely important to the team and helping new runners grow into point-scorers. Tafelski said, “You’ve got guys who have the tools, they belong there performance-wise, but what they don’t have is experience. So a lot of that is the mentorship that we rely on our seniors and our experienced kids to provide. That was a big deal.”
The team looked prepared for anything right from the first day of the season. Coming out of the fall’s cross country season, Tafelski said he saw “Tremendous progress. We knew based on the cross country season that we had we knew the distance guys were going to be really strong and we knew that in that event area we were going to be really, really difficult to beat.”
Tafelski saw progress in individual runners that helped the team greatly: “In our 4×400, Rowan McMahill and Noah Petrassi were exceptional in their legs. You look at them on paper a year ago, and they don’t really seem to be a threat. So a lot of those guys really turned the corner in ways where we wouldn’t have been able to do what we were able to do without them.”
After such a successful season, and with such a strong senior class, questions always arise about the future for a high school sports team.
Tafelski is confident that his runners will do well in college: “I think these guys who are graduating are really well equipped to handle the demands of college. I think you can talk to any college athlete no matter what sport they’re in [and they’ll tell you] it’s not high school part two. It’s not the sequel of this. It’s different. Especially if you go Division I because this is educational. Sports are a part of school. It’s much more outcome driven, especially at Division I. Winning is as much if not more of a priority as character development or skill development. In Division I, if you’re not hacking it, they’re going to recruit somebody to take your spot the next year. Even now with the transfer portal it’s even worse. It’s much more stressful. It’s much more demanding. It’s much more time consuming.”
He noted that college “really is another world, but these guys, across the board, regardless of the event area… they’re willing to make sacrifices along the way. Socially, time-wise. These guys in cross country were up running in the morning before school every day. They get what it takes, and I think they’re excited to embrace the challenge that comes with the next level.”
With many team leaders leaving for college next year, the team needs younger runners to step up. “When you’re senior heavy, it’s hard,” said Tafelski. “Sometimes the tall trees need to fall for the younger ones to get the sunlight. There’s a lot of kids who are working hard, and they’re flying under the radar. I think people are going to be surprised at what kind of team that we have in a year because I don’t really see us taking a step back. I think that we’re ready to go. We’ve got some guys who are excited for the opportunity.”
Other teams around the state have been putting doubt on Westfield’s future all season, and both coaches and players have been hearing it. “Challenge accepted,” said Tafelski.
