05.16.08
Posted in Athletes, Profiles, Yada Yada at 3:26 pm by Administrator
Amputee runner Oscar Pistorius wins appeal
By COLLEEN BARRY, Associated Press Writer
MILAN, Italy (AP)—His Olympic dream suddenly revived, Oscar Pistorius can get back to what he loves most—running.
The double-amputee sprinter from South Africa was cleared Friday to compete in his bid to qualify for the Beijing Games.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport overturned a ruling by the International Association of Athletics Federations that barred the 21-year-old runner from the Olympics and any other able-bodied competition because of his prosthetic racing blades.
Pistorius broke into a broad smile to a roomful of applause when the decision was announced. He reached toward his manager, Peet van Zyl, for a victory handshake.
“I am ecstatic,” Pistorius said. “When I found out I was crying. It is a battle that has been going on for far too long. It’s a great day for sport. I think this day is going to go down in history for the equality of disabled people.”
He is the first to acknowledge it will be a challenge to make it to the Aug. 8-24 Beijing Games. He holds the 400-meter Paralympic world record of 46.56, but must reach the qualifying time of 45.55 to compete in the individual event in Beijing.
“My hopes are very big for the Olympics for 2008,” Pistorius said. “I think the time period at the moment is very short. Obviously, I have the opportunity, so I am not going to let it go … but it is going to be very difficult in order to run those times.”
However, Pistorius also could be invited to join the South African relay team, which would not require him to qualify.
“We are very much hopeful that he will be part and parcel of our team,” said Leonard Chuene, president of Athletics South Africa.
If Pistorius does go to the Olympics, he will be competing alongside another amputee South African athlete: Natalie du Toit, who qualified for Beijing in open-water swimming.
Pistorius was born without fibulas—the long, thin outer bone between the knee and ankle—and was 11 months old when his legs were amputated below the knee.
“Oscar Pistorius is a determined and gutsy athlete who will now no doubt put all his energy into reaching the qualification standards for the Olympic Games,” the International Olympic Committee said in a statement. “If he makes it we would be delighted to welcome him.”
Pistorius will resume training in South Africa on Monday, before returning to Europe on May 28. Van Zyl said Pistorius will be running in able-bodied races July 2 in Milan and July 11 at the Golden Gala in Rome, and that many other offers have been coming in.
“A lot of the time we’ve had this year we’ve devoted to the court case,” Pistorius said. “Now when I get home my time can be dedicated to training. I am going to have to start thinking about getting my body in shape in order to run those (qualifying) times. I am hopeful there will be enough time but it is going to be very difficult.”
Regardless of whether he runs in the Olympics, Pistorius plans to compete in Beijing at the Sept. 6-17 Paralympics. He will prepare by running in disabled events in the Netherlands and Germany.
Pistorius appealed to CAS, the highest tribunal in international sports, to overturn a Jan. 14 ruling by the IAAF. Track and field’s ruling organization banned him from competing against able-bodied runners on grounds that his carbon fiber blades gave him a mechanical advantage.
A two-day hearing was held before three arbitrators at CAS headquarters last month. The panel said the IAAF decision is “revoked with immediate effect and the athlete is eligible to compete in IAAF events.”
“Oscar will be welcomed wherever he competes this summer,” IAAF president Lamine Diack said in a statement. “He is an inspirational man and we look forward to admiring his achievements in the future.”
Even if Pistorius fails to get the 400-meter qualifying time, South African selectors could add the University of Pretoria student to the Olympic 1,600-meter relay squad if it qualifies for the games among the top 16 in the world.
Pistorius would not require a qualifying time and could be taken to Beijing as an alternate. Six runners can be picked for the relay squad.
The IAAF based its January decision on studies by German professor Gert-Peter Brueggemann, who said the J-shaped “Cheetah” blades were energy efficient
Pistorius’ lawyers countered with independent tests conducted by a team led by MIT professor Hugh M. Herr that claimed to show he doesn’t gain any advantage over able-bodied runners.
CAS said the IAAF failed to prove Pistorius’ running blades gave him an advantage.
“If I had to look at the situation, how many amputee athletes use the exact same prosthetic leg as I do and don’t run nearly close to the same times?” Pistorius said. “I think running has become my purpose in life. It has become my calling in life.”
Associated Press Writers Graham Dunbar in Geneva and Celean Jacobson in Johannesburg, South Africa, contributed to this report.
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05.14.08
Posted in Athletes, Coaches, Profiles, Schools at 6:47 am by Administrator
Today’s (May 14) Central Section Grand Masters Track and Field Meet glance
The Bakersfield Californian | Tuesday, May 13 2008 11:07 PM
Last Updated: Tuesday, May 13 2008 11:12 PM
CIF Central Section Grand Masters
Where: Liberty High School
Directions: From Rosedale Highway, take Calloway Drive south. Turn right on Brimhall Road, left on Jewetta Avenue and immediately right on Patrick Henry Drive.
Advancement: Top three boys and girls in each event qualify for CIF State Championships, May 30-31 at Cerritos College in Norwalk.
Non-weight events glance
Sprints
Boys favorites: Fresno-Central’s Brendon Bigelow in both the 100 and 200 meters. Hanford West’s Vontrail Love could challenge in the 100, as could Liberty’s Isiah Purvis in the 200. Bakersfield High and Clovis East are the teams to beat in the 400 relay.
Locals to watch: Purvis is a real threat in the 200, and Bakersfield’s Emmanuel Turner (boys) and Brushay Wandick (girls) are coming on strong in the 100.
Middle distance
Boys favorites: North’s Anthony Mitchell has the section’s best times in the 400 and 800, but he didn’t run at the 400 in last week’s South Area meet, choosing to focus on the longer race. Expect him to win it. Liberty’s Purvis, Stockdale’s Daniel Lozano and Clovis-Buchanan’s James Smith could fill the void in the 400.
Locals to watch: Mitchell, Lozano and Purvis, plus the Liberty 1,600 relay team, which was fourth in state last year and leads the section by nearly two seconds. On the girls side, Ashlee Thomas of Centennial has a chance in the 800 and Stockdale’s relay team will be close.
Distance events
Boys favorites: Foothill’s Chris Schwartz wasn’t the Division I state cross country champion for no reason. He has the best 3,200 time in the section by 22 seconds. He’ll take on Eric Battles of Clovis West and Jonathan Sanchez of Clovis-Buchanan in the 1,600.
Girls favorites: Can you say Hasay? It would be the shock of the meet if San Luis Obispo-Mission Prep phenom Joran Hasay didn’t win both events. The junior leads the nation with a 1,600 time of 4:42.50 and a 3,200 time of 10:03.07.
Locals to watch: Besides Schwartz, keep an eye on North’s Cody Gragg and Candace Carlson.
Hurdles
Locals to watch: With a good day, Taylor Jackson could give Frontier its first section title. On the boys side, East’s Eddie Morrow is a threat in the 300 hurdles.
Jumps
Locals to watch: The Ridgeview boys duo of Chris Kelly and Johnny Carter hold the section’s best two triple jump marks. Collatz also is a freshman phenom in the triple.
– Zach Ewing
High school track and field: FLYIN’ HIGH
Foothill’s Ragans, Shafter’s Jelmini are two of the top high school throwers in nation
BY ZACH EWING * CALIFORNIAN STAFF WRITER
zewing@bakersfield.com | Tuesday, May 13 2008 11:13 PM
Last Updated: Tuesday, May 13 2008 11:22 PM
On the surface, Anna Jelmini of Shafter and Dayshan Ragans of Foothill High are easy to lump together. After all, each of them represents the next harvest of Kern County’s incredible throwing crop, the next local able to throw a shot put or a discus farther than almost anyone in the country. Each is a heavy favorite at today’s Central Section championships at Liberty. Presuming they advance, Jelmini and Ragans likely will enter the state championships May 30-31 at Cerritos College in Norwalk with the best marks in California in both throwing events.
Foothill High’s Dayshan Ragans is a favorite to win the discus and shot put and today’s Central Section championships at Liberty.
They also have a presence on national top-10 lists — Jelmini has the nation’s best high school girls discus throw and the fifth-best shot put mark, and Ragans is fifth on the boys discus list.
“To be able to do something like that is pretty amazing,” said Alan Collatz, head track and field coach at Cal State Bakersfield and one of the forefathers of Kern County’s throwing success. “I mean, you know, all across the nation, they train just hard. So for someone out of this area, out of Kern County, to be so high on the list, it’s something special. It doesn’t happen all the time, that’s for sure.”
But you don’t have to dig very deep to learn that though Jelmini and Ragans have ended up in the same place, their backgrounds are about as dissimilar as can be.
It’s like a reverse fork in the road.
Just really blessed
Anna Jelmini’s entry into Kern County throwing lore started in the fourth grade at an after-school program. The earliest kids are allowed to throw the discus is fifth grade, so she started that a year later.
Her coaching has also been some of the best Kern County has to offer — and that’s pretty darn good coaching.
Dawn Dumble-Godbehere, a former state champion at Bakersfield High and NCAA champion at UCLA, started working with Jelmini in the sixth grade. John Rexroth spelled Dumble while she was pregnant during Jelmini’s seventh-grade year.
Dumble was impressed, and Jelmini was on her way.
“Anna’s always been real athletic,” said her dad, Rick Jelmini. “She’s a basketball player, been a swimmer for a long time, could have even played volleyball. (Dumble) will just tell you Anna picks things up really fast. She kind of converted Anna to a spin style, and she has good balance and things like that.”
Now coached at Shafter by Dumble’s husband, Matt Godbehere, Anna Jelmini has blossomed into a technically sound, self-analyzing thrower.
“(The success) hasn’t really sunk in yet,” Jelmini said. “Bakersfield has had some really great throwers. I’m just really blessed. I’m just trying to work hard.”
Last year, as a sophomore, Jelmini was fourth in the state in the discus (throwing a 153-5) and seventh in the shot put (41-11.5). Either of those places would be considered a disappointment this year, considering Jelmini has the best discus mark (183-11) in the state by more than 24 feet and the best shot mark (49-2.5) by about 41/2 feet.
Her 183-11 discus throw at the Bill Kearney Invitational in Salinas on April 19 set a Central Section record and equaled the fourth-best throw ever by an American high schooler.
“She’s been working really hard in the last three years, and she’s really seeing the dividends this year,” Godbehere said. “She loves to throw, she’s aware of what it’s going to take for her to get better and she’s willing to put in the work to do that.”
Jelmini isn’t yet sure where she’ll attend college, but throwing has been a huge part of her life thus far, and that will almost certainly continue.
“Sometimes you see kids sign (with a college) their senior year, and then you just don’t see their names anymore,” said Rick Jelmini, who said the family has returned more than 30 questionnaires to Division I colleges. “But Anna’s never satisfied. She’s not going to get burned out.”
The four-leaf clover
Dayshan Ragans probably won’t get burned out either, at least not any time soon. He’s only been throwing for three years.
Nope, that’s not a typo. Ragans was plucked out of his freshman P.E. class at Foothill because he was the first student ever to out-throw track coach Joe Cooper.
It didn’t take long for Ragans to figure out that throwing is what he wanted to do. Wayne Brewer — like Godbehere, a former CSUB thrower — came to Foothill before Ragans’ sophomore year and has groomed him into the state’s premier high school thrower.
“We were lucky to get him,” Brewer said. “It was like finding a four-leaf clover. Seriously, he’s so raw. He hasn’t even been throwing four years.”
But he is strong, especially in his lower body. Ragans can squat 500 pounds and hang-clean more than 300. And to boot, Brewer said Ragans soaks up information better than anyone he’s coached.
“Genetics has a lot to do with it,” Brewer said. “But he’s like a sponge. I can tell him something, and he goes out and does it. No questions asked.”
Ragans took second in the state in the discus last season but fouled out in the shot put finals. This year, he has a 20-foot cushion in the discus with a 203-7 over the next-best throw and a better-than-two-foot margin in the shot put with a 63-4.75.
Ragans has had to come on quickly to the sport, but he also has extra motivation for excelling.
He’s signed to continue the county’s throwing pipeline at CSUB next year, and he’s counting the days till the state meet — not only because those dates represent his goal in throwing, but because it’s the day he can move away from home.
Ragans said his family life can be difficult and that throwing offers an escape. He declined to speak specifically, other than to say, “I don’t want to be another statistic.
“I wake up, and it’s just like a countdown,” he said. “It’s going to be like a new beginning, coming into a new world.”
Meanwhile, a double state championship, obviously, isn’t out of the question.
“My goal is breaking that state record,” Ragans said. “… I have a lot of fun throwing. I went out, and I didn’t realize I what I was capable of.”
The paths converge
Shafter is a smaller school than Foothill, so the schools have different travel plans and often compete in separate divisions. But today, at the section finals at Liberty, Jelmini’s and Ragan’s roads come together again.
They’ll be joined by yet another Kern County thrower of the future in Stockdale’s Alex Collatz, who owns a Central Section record with a 159-4 discus throw as a freshman — that’s behind only Jelmini in the state and is third in the nation.
In the Southern Section, Burroughs junior Kayla Kovar has top-five marks in the state in both throwing events.
“This area is amazing for throws,” said Scott Semar, who coached Collatz at CSUB in the mid-1980s and then oversaw the golden era of Kern County throwing at Bakersfield High from 1987-91.
Young Alex Collatz is a prime example of the area’s recurring success. Collatz’s father is the same Alan Collatz who coaches at CSUB.
Alan Collatz and Semar have helped produce dozens of state-, national- and even world-class throwers from the county, not to mention half of the throwing coaches at Bakersfield high schools.
“It has been very successful here for many, many years, and a lot of it started with Scott Semar when he was out here,” Alan Collatz said. “Then I came out here. Throwers tend to come here. We’ve been lucky, and they’ve worked hard and gone out in the community.”
And groomed prodigious athletes like Ragans and Jelmini. And there we go lumping them together again. It’s not hard. Heck, they even use the same, spinning, style.
But Collatz is wary of pronouncing Ragans and Jelmini so similar.
“You can look at the 10 best throwers in the United States, and they all do something different,” Collatz said. “None of them are the same. This guys starts a little lower, or this guy is more upright, this guy sweeps a little wider. There is no one way.
“… But one is (Jelmini and Ragans) are hard workers. Two is they’re strong athletes. And three is they’re well-coached. You put hard work with physical abilities with good technical coaching, and you’re going to be successful.”
Different methods, different paths, very similar results. And Kern County has two more extraordinary throwers.
“There has been a lot of great throwing over the years,” Godbehere said. “… A lot of people have taken interest in throws. Is it the athletes or the coaching? Probably a combination of all of it.”
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04.22.08
Posted in Athletes, Profiles, Schools, Yada Yada at 9:26 pm by Administrator
North distance runner Gragg headed to Fresno St.
BY ZACH EWING, Californian staff writer
zewing@bakersfield.com | Tuesday, Apr 22 2008 8:43 PM
Last Updated: Tuesday, Apr 22 2008 8:46 PM
With cameras clicking and people cheering Tuesday in North High’s cafeteria, distance runner Cody Gragg stole one glance away from the dotted line.
“It was hard to not focus on the camera and focus on the paper,” Gragg said. “Pretend it’s not there. The nerves were coming.”
What’s even harder, Gragg said, is becoming an accomplished distance runner in just three years. That’s what he’s done, going out for track his freshman year only because he was struggling in baseball, and then for cross country the next fall because he wasn’t already on the football team.
“I was going to play football my freshman year, but I pulled my groin, so I didn’t do anything,” Gragg said. “… I went out for track, gave it a shot, and it kind of skyrocketed from there.”
He’s become one of Bakersfield’s premier runners, taking 11th in the Central Section meet with a time of 16:00 and qualifying for the state meet. He also owns a top-10 time among section runners in the 3,200 meters and a top-20 time in the 1,600.
“Darrin Sundgren and Bill Lind, our distance coaches, have worked really hard with him,” said Allan Smart, North’s head track and field coach. “(Gragg) was the diamond in the rough.”
Gragg, who chose Fresno State over Long Beach State and some smaller schools, said the ride has made him thankful for that injured groin.
“I sure like the way things played out,” Gragg said.
He was also happy for all of Tuesday’s hullabaloo — if not entirely comfortable with it.
“It takes a lot of pressure off my shoulders,” Gragg said. “… It’s a little (uncomfortable), but I’m glad they all came out. I’d rather everybody be here than nobody be here.”
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