Last fall, Caroline Ticse made a decision to skip playing soccer for Allentown High School’s girls team, a sport she has played since she was very young, to run cross country. She made this decision to be better prepared as a distance runner for the school’s indoor and outdoor girls track and field teams.
Top: Allentown High School’s Caroline Ticse set school records for the 1,600- and 3,200- meter runs during the indoor track and field season and qualified for the Feb. 27 Meet of Champions in both events. Bottom: Caroline Ticse gets in some road work around the school. PHOTOS BY JEFF GRANIT staff It proved to be time well spent.
“I’ve always played soccer, but I ran cross country because my coach said it would help me with track,” said the talented junior. “It helped me so much with my success indoors.”
Ticse, who had set school records last spring in the outdoor season in the 1,600 meters (5:29) and the 3,200 (12:01), concluded a distinctive indoor season with a trip to the NJSIAA Indoor Track and Field Meet of Champions on her 17th birthday on Feb. 27, and made the most of the opportunity at the Bennett Athletic Complex in Toms River.
Ticse recorded a 5:21.01 in the 1,600 that wasn’t near medal contention but beat the school record she held previously at 5:23.05. Ticse also won her heat as the No. 3 seed in the 3,200. She ended up 13th out of 42 runners overall with a time of 11:28.72. It was shy of the school record in that event, which she also holds at 11:26.52.
“She ran good, real good,” Allentown High School girls coach Dave Mendez said. “In the two-mile (3,200 meters), her heat was the slower one, and if she was in the other, faster heat, she still may not have gotten a medal, but I think her time would’ve been faster.”
In the 1,600, Ticse stayed back as she normally does and closed strongly.
“In the mile (1,600 meters), she was really warming up (for the two-mile), and that (3,200) came only 45 minutes later,” Mendez said. Ticse said the short break time between events did not affect her performance.
“I always loved running and I really started it in my freshman year,” said Ticse, who said she dabbled in different distances while running in middle school. She said she ran the 400, 800 and intermediate hurdles last spring and ran some distance races in the last indoors season. But it was nothing like what she has shown over the past three months.
“I started really running distances in the spring of my sophomore year [for outdoor track] to try the mile and two-mile, and it escalated from there,” she said.
Escalated, indeed.
In the NJSIAA Group II South sectional championships, Ticse was third in the 3,200 meters in 11:42.12 and fourth in the 1,600 in 5:27.80.
Just as with any successful runner, Ticse continued to drop her times consistently. She knocked 15 seconds off her 3,200 sectionals time in the Group IV championships in 11:27.56. She made the final cut in the 1,600 for the MOC at the groups championships with a sixth-place 5:26.06 time, nearly two seconds faster than what she ran in the sectionals.
A week later in the MOC, Ticse would trim another hefty five seconds off her time in the 1,600, a creditable performance despite finishing out of the medals. Her time in the 3,200, which she said is the “better” of her two events, was just a second slower than the week before while competing in the slower heat at the MOC.
“In the mile (1,600) I was seeded toward the end and didn’t come out last in my heat and, in fact, I beat out girls seeded ahead of me,” said Ticse. “In the mile, I start strong and stay strong and give it everything I got at the end. In the two-mile, I was really happy with it. I wanted to finish first (in her heat). I ran that event like I usually do, picking off girls toward the end.”
Those strategies helped her excel in the Burlington County meet where she was second in the 3,200 meters and third in the 1,600.
Ticse credits her success to the diligence of her coaches, who include girls distance coach Ray Britton and girls head coach Mendez, who a year earlier was the girls South Jersey Coach of the Year for Non-Public B state champion Our Lady of Mercy Academy of Newfield. The school has since disbanded its program amid school budget cutbacks, Mendez said.
But the groundwork of success was set in the fall when Ticse emerged as the top runner on her team during the cross country season and ended her season in the NJSIAA Groups championships. She would not blame the breath-defying hills of Holmdel Park’s course as the reason for an uneventful effort that day after she blazed the Thompson Park course a week earlier in the South Jersey sectionals for a sixth-place 19:32 time. Her top time was 19:05 in the South Jersey Open, an invitational at Delsea.
As for continuing her career in college, Ticse said, “I wouldn’t mind running competitively in college.”
Ticse said she is most interested in the sciences, particularly the field of medicine.
For now, she is enjoying not only her own success but that of her team in what she said “probably was one of the best seasons Allentown has had. I feel like we are improving as a school.”
Ticse was joined in the Groups championships by two teammates and a member of the boys team. High jumper Bridget Meloro, a junior, missed the cut for the MOC with an eighth-place finish at 4 feet 10 inches. She had cleared 5-0 in the sectionals for sixth place. Senior shot putter Julie Duffy threw a school record 30-7 1/2 in the groups meet but did not qualify for the MOC. She advanced out of the sectionals with a sixth-place throw of 30-5 1/2.
Representing the boys at the Group meet was Zachary Wishbow. He finished fourth in the Central Jersey Group III 1,600 (4:44.20)