05.14.08
Posted in Profiles, Coaches, Athletes, Schools, Championships, Valley, Grand Masters, College, Signings, Track Meets, Upcoming, McFarland, Foothill, Results, CSUB, Wasco, Shafter, Taft, North, East, Golden Valley, Liberty, Stockdale, Centennial, South, West, Ridgeview, Highland, Garces, Frontier, Tehachapi, Burroughs, Noise Flash!!!, Bakersfield 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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01.27.08
Posted in Invitationals, Schools, Results, Info, Kern Track Results, College, CSUB, Track Results at 11:54 am by Administrator
Sprinters, Throwers Record PR’s
Courtesy: CSU Bakersfield Sports Information
Release: 01/25/2008
COMPLETE RESULTS
photos HERE
Courtesy: CSU Bakersfield Sports Information
http://www.gorunners.com/
Sophomore sprinter Sheena Cooper set a new PR in the 60 meter dash Friday.
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. – A return to the J.L. Walkup Skydome resulted in a second consecutive outing of impressive performances for the CSUB men’s and women’s indoor track & field teams, this time competing in the Northern Arizona University Friday Night Challenge.
“We had some good performances, a number of PR’s and are continuing to get better,” said CSUB Head Coach Alan Collatz. “I’m encouraged with our results once again.”
On the women’s side, it was sophomore sprinter Sheena Cooper leading the way with a 7.76 result in the 60 meter dash. The time was another personal best for Cooper who finished the same race, in the same facility, in a time of 7.88 just one week ago. The Bakersfield native also competed in the 200 meter dash, placing 13th in a time of 26.53.
Sophomore Connie King improved her time in the 400 meter dash, racing to a 1:01.47, 11th place finish, while senior Felicia Jasso trimmed nearly 10 seconds off last week’s time in the 3000 meter run.
Senior Grace McClellan placed second in the high jump with a leap of 5-03.75 while fellow senior Peace Nwosu tied for fourth with a jump of 5-01.75. Freshman Brianna Woodfox improved her long jump distance by more than three inches, placing third with a mark of 16-11.25 and sophomore Katina Fruguglietti earned a sixth place mark of 47-01.00 in the weight throw.
In the men’s side it was once again the jumpers and throwers garnering the best success. Freshman David Charleston won the triple jump event with a leap of 46-08.25. He also placed third in the high jump (6-01.50) right behind teammate Alex Haver who turned in a second place mark of 6-03.50.
Ryan Nichols, making his collegiate debut, placed second in the long jump with a mark of 21-00.75.
“This was Ryan’s first meet and he got off to a good start for the season,” said Collatz. “And David improved his mark in the triple jump.”
Also setting another personal record was junior Steve Trojanowski in the weight throw. His third place hurl of 58-00.25 was more than two feet beyond his previous personal best throw from just one week ago. Trojanowski also placed sixth in the shot put (44-08.00), while teammate Brian Lopez took third in the event with a mark of 51-10.00.
The Roadrunners make their final return to the J.L. Walkup Skydome next Saturday for the Mountain T’s Invitational before making their home debut on Feb. 9, playing host to the Lee Adams Invitational.
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01.22.08
Posted in Invitationals, Schools, Results, Info, Kern Track Results, College, CSUB, Track Results at 8:15 am by Administrator
‘Runners Look Solid In Opening Meet
Courtesy: CSU Bakersfield Sports Information
Release: 01/19/2008
COMPLETE RESULTS
coach boyles photos HERE
Courtesy: CSU Bakersfield Sports Information
http://www.gorunners.com/
Steve Trojanowski placed fourth in the men’s weigth throw Saturday at the Lumberjack Invite.
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. – The CSUB men’s and women’s indoor track & field teams opened the 2008 season with solid performances in numerous events at the Lumberjack Invitational Saturday, giving Head Coach Alan Collatz plenty to look forward to with his young squad.
“Overall we did excellent competing at 7000 feet and with many of our athletes competing for the first time at a college meet,” said Collatz. “The first meet sets the stage for the season and gives us an idea of where we are and what improvements we need to make to move forward.”
On the men’s side, the Roadrunner throwers had a strong first meet, setting a number of personal best marks. Junior Steve Trojanowski placed fourth in the weight throw, hurling the 35-pound weight a distance of 55-08.50. Senior Brian Lopez’s mark of 52-00.50 was good for sixth place while Clayton Morovich and Evan Wahl both topped 51 feet to finish eighth and ninth, respectively.
Former ‘Runner standout Arnaldo Cueto won the weight throw event with a mark of 73.03.25 while another CSUB alum, Chris Figures, placed second in the shot put with a top throw of 62.03.75.
Freshman David Charleston turned in a third place, 46-03.25 mark in the triple jump while also placing sixth in the high jump (6-04.00).
“David had a solid double performance for his collegiate debut,” said Collatz. “He turned in good marks in both events.”
On the track, freshman Cameron Jost placed seventh in the 200 meter dash, finishing in a time of 22.61. In the one mile run, sophomores Edward Lee and Jose Orozco finished eighth and ninth with times of 4:43.49 and 4:54.39, respectively.
On the women’s side, sophomore Sheena Cooper turned in a personal best of 7.88 in the preliminaries of the 60 meter dash. The time earned the Bakersfield native a spot in the finals, but she took a false start and was unable to complete the race. Fellow sophomore Connie King placed 11th in the 400 meter dash (1:01.83) while sophomore Bethany Lopez and senior Valerie Taylor came in fifth and sixth in the 800 meter run.
CSUB head cross country coach and assistant track coach, Maija Rohde won the 3000 meter run in a time of 10:57.39. Meanwhile, Grace McClellan and Peace Nwosu had solid performances in the high jump. McClellan placed sixth overall with a mark of 5-03.75.
The ‘Runners will make the trek back to the J.L. Walkup Skydome Friday for the Northern Arizona University Team Challenge.
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