Princeton Packet Athlete of the Week

Stuart’s Pollack-Robbins makes fast exit

By: Justin Feil
   Even as she prepares to graduate and leave Stuart Country Day, Chloe Pollack-Robbins is already thinking about what she can give back to improve the track and field team.
   "When I get rich," the Tartan senior said, "I’m going to give them a track and that’s what they have to use it for."
   In the meantime, Stuart will have to settle for the parking lot and half-way, if that, decent equipment. It didn’t seem to slow her in the two biggest meets of Stuart’s year.
   "One time, we had two hurdles out and one of them was duct-taped together," Pollack-Robins said. "We were in the parking lot and cars were backing up into us while we were jumping over hurdles. We were never able to run over 10 hurdles because we only have about five, and four of them are taped together."
   Yet, amazingly, Pollack-Robbins has been one of the top prep hurdlers around, and she proved it again in the state Prep B and Patriot League meets last week.
   Pollack-Robbins pulled off some of the toughest multiple-event duty to pick up big points for the Tartans, and plenty of hardware for herself. At the Prep B meet last Tuesday, she won the 100 hurdles, 400 hurdles and was part of the winning 4×400 relay. She also captured a third place in the 400 meters to help Stuart win its second straight state title.
   At conferences, she wrapped up a meet Friday that had been postponed the week before by capturing a gold medal in the 4×400 to go with her golds in the 400 and 400 hurdles and a silver medal in the 100 hurdles as Stuart held off Pennington to sweep its end-of-season meets.
   Chloe Pollack-Robbins is the Princeton Packet Athlete of the Week.
   "Chloe is an enigma," said Stuart head coach Tom Harrington. "She has tremendous ability. You never know when she’ll do it. When the pressure is on, she doesn’t want to look bad."
   Thanks in part to her accomplishments, Pollack-Robbins is going to be looking great in her new "Back-to-back without a track" T-shirt. It won’t be the only thing with which she’s departing Stuart. She’s also the school’s record holder in the 100 and 400 hurdles, the former of which she set in the Prep B meet. Her times are all the more impressive with the difficult conditions she’s trained under again.
   "We haven’t had a lot of practice," Pollack-Robbins said. "We don’t have a track. And everything was getting cancelled this year. We barely had any meets. I think we only had four meets before conferences. But it’s senior year and I ran my heart out. I’m never going to do it again."
   Pollack-Robbins, who was part of the Prep B championship cross country team as well, had what Harrington noted were some demanding days in which to come through for the Tartans.
   "At conferences, we didn’t have a clear plan for the 400," he said. "Pennington has two really good runners and we were hoping to split them up. She goes out and runs the second-fastest time in school history, 62.7, to win. And that was after she went out and won the 400 hurdles. With the 400 hurdles, she had won them last year, and she approaches them like, ‘I’m champion. This is my baby.’ That’s what she really wants to win.
   "She hadn’t done an open 400 until conferences. That was her first one of the season. Her best time until then was around 64 (seconds in a relay). I was in total shock."
   Pollack-Robbins, a Hopewell resident, didn’t stop there as she also turned in another solid 400 to help the mile relay capture its title.
   "She did the second leg in 63," Harrington said. "The idea of her running second, where most teams have their slowest runner, was to take the pressure off the next two legs. She blew everyone away and by the time the third leg got it, she had a lot of time to play with."
   In the state meet, Pollack-Robbins was just as busy, though the order of events made it even tougher on her legs.
   "We needed the points," Harrington said. "She went out and took third in the 400, and before that won the 100 hurdles with a new school record of 18.2. After the 400, she comes over and keels over and when the 400 hurdles goes off, I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but she won and we went 1-2.
   "She had three finals in four races, all in the middle of the meet. She did the second leg of the 4×400 not that long after the 400 hurdles and ran a 63 quarter (mile) again to give us a big lead again."
   On the strength of such finishes, Stuart had 168 points to second-place Pennington’s 129 at the Prep B meet and 157 to Pennington’s 125 in the Patriot meet.
   "We weren’t quite sure what other schools had," Pollack-Robbins said. "We didn’t know what Pennington had because, even though we ran against them earlier, they didn’t have their second-best sprinter there. The conference was pretty close Friday, but we were determined to get the icing on the cake after winning states. All in all, I was very happy with my year."
   It was a year that ended with a nice array of gold medals as well as a silver and bronze. It proved that Chloe Pollack-Robbins went out on top, and it showed that she doesn’t need to donate a track. She has already given quite a lot to the Stuart Country Day track and field team.