By Justin Feil, Assistant Sports Editor
Buoyed by strong showings at the Meet of Champions, the future looks good for the Princeton High School track and field teams.
A core of underclassmen shined while pairing with some select seniors for an encouraging finish to the New Jersey portion of the season. Both boys and girls teams expect to send representatives to the high school nationals in two weeks.
“I think for years our goal has always been, let’s build a program,” said PHS girls head coach and distance coach Jim Smirk. “Let’s not just have good teams, but let’s year after year be in it. I think we’re getting closer and closer to it every year.”
Jackie Patterson, Paige Metzheiser, Jordan Vine and Maia Hauschild were ninth in the 4×400 in 3:59.03. The top eight finishers in each event at the MOC earn medals.
“It felt great to be a part of that 4×4,” said Hauschild, the junior who anchored in 57.9 seconds. “Throughout my three years, we’ve never had a 4×4 team that was as competitive as this 4×4. The whole season, we realized our potential to break 4:00 and make it to Meet of Champions. Our potential showed this week with our time and our places.”
Hauschild nearly caught the South Brunswick anchor in what amounted to a two-team race in their heat. The Little Tigers were better than projected.
“We weren’t very highly seeded in the second to last heat,” Hauschild said. “We knew in order to have a chance to we had to run well. We ended up second to South Brunswick.”
The finish sets the Little Tigers up for quite an encore if they can return to the MOC. With all but Metzheiser due back, PHS likes its chances to improve thanks to the experience that its core absorbed. They will get more experience at nationals together.
“We’re all very excited,” Hauschild said. “It’s our first time running the 4×4 at nationals. It was our goal to make the championship standard which was 3:58. We missed by a second.
“I definitely feel like there’s more. There’s a whole new energy surrounding nationals. We all performed well last year even though it extended our season. I ran a PR in the super sprint medley. And Paige ran a huge PR as part of our sprint medley.”
PHS ran two relays at the MOC. Julie Bond, Anne Fleur Hartmanshenn, Lou Mialhe and Metzheiser were 23rd in the 4×800. They have another chance to compete at nationals.
“At this point, on our relay teams we trust each other and trust ourselves,” Hauschild said. “We’ll definitely use the excitement and the energy to our advantage and put it into a great performance as opposed to being nervous.”
The PHS girls team had one individual compete in the MOC. Noa Levy tied for 11th in the girls high jump with a new personal-record 5-feet-2.
“She jumped so strong,” Smirk said. “It was great. To see a sophomore with that sort of confidence was amazing. She was cold as ice. She just listened to Coach (Ben) Samara and did what she had to do and moved on. It was awesome. It was a solid, solid jump.”
Levy also had a good shot at 5-4, and nearly cleared it on her second jump. She has two more years to continue to jump higher.
“This is a starting point,” Smirk said. “This isn’t the apex. This is where you learn to be a better athlete. Her jumps at 5-4, her second jump at 5-4 was lights out, she just missed it. We know there’s more there. We’re excited. We gave her some ideas about what we want her to do moving forward and how she can become a better athlete. She’s a kid who’s going to follow through with that, so we’re excited for that.”
There’s the same sort of enthusiasm on the boys side. The Little Tigers sent a young relay. Without a senior on the team, Noah Chen, Patrick O’Connell, Cy Watsky and Ben Siegel were 26th in the boys 4×800.
“That 4×8, they’re underclassmen, they really put it out there for a quality effort through states,” Smirk said. “They didn’t have a great cross country season. They had a really tough season with some injuries and everything. We came into winter and were flat, and we didn’t have an identity yet. I think we worked really hard to create one. I think that’s what you saw come sectionals, states and Meet of Champions for those kids. They kind of created an identity and said, you know what, we’re young and we’re tough and we work hard, and let’s see where that gets us. That’s what paid off ultimately for us.”
The PHS boys’ MOC was highlighted by an individual, Alex Roth. The sophomore was 15th in the boys 3200 in 9:20.32, an eight-second improvement from the Group III meet and a new personal record.
“It was very motivating,” Roth said. “I was a tad bit frustrated after groups that my time hadn’t dropped from sectionals. I was bummed, but then it was understandable because of the heat.
“At groups, I had run the 4×8 the day before, so I wasn’t quite as fresh as I was the Meet of Champs. At Meet of Champs, I thought I had a chance of running well. I took risks. I feel like I ran better because of the competition I was against.”
The race sets him up for even bigger things down the road. Roth is on the verge of qualifying for the emerging elite category at nationals. Roth has shown he competes best against the toughest competition.
“The most impressive thing about Alex’s race is he didn’t run it just to hang on,” Smirk said of his MOC run. “At 1200 meters out, he took a shot at it and made those athletes go race against him. That’s ultimately going to be his legacy down the road — time wise, his times will be what they’ll be by the end of his career – but his competitive instincts are incredible. They’re spot on meet after meet. He doesn’t win sneakily. He puts it out there, he says if you’re here to race, let’s race. That’s a pretty rare perspective to have for a kid who’s a sophomore.”
When the MOC race broke into a couple different packs, it was Roth that tried to surge to the front of his pack. He gained confidence from being able to drop his best time in that environment.
“It provides really good learning experience mainly because in the future I’ll be more competitive in those types of races,” Roth said. “Mainly thinking about cross (country) next year, I know I can run competitively with a lot of the top runners in the state. Knowing that now will be useful in later competition.”
Roth ran at freshman nationals last year, and that experience set him up for this year. He trained with relatively low mileage, but reacted well to it. He will up his mileage this summer as he takes aim at running better than 9:10, a goal he feels is reasonable.
“This year was more than I expected, but it was what I hoped for,” Roth said. “I hoped to get down to 9:20, but I didn’t know how realistic that was. I ran 9:35 in the winter. A lot of dual meets, I wasn’t running that great. Then the bigger meets, I started to run better. With more and more meets, I started to realize it was more of a possibility.”
