Gilman Runs Away With Indoor Track Championship

The third time was the charm for the Gilman indoor track team.

After coming up short when favored to win the MIAA A Conference championship meet the previous two years, the team ran away from the competition on Feb. 4, scoring 151 points—50 more than second-place finisher Mt. St. Joe.

The victory brings the trophy cup home to the Roland Park school for the first time since it was named after Johnnie Foreman, their longtime coach.

A couple of weeks after the Greyhounds secured the victory at the Prince George's Sports and Learning Complex in Landover, Foreman and the team's six co-captains sat down to talk about the season.

"Last year, we had the expectation of winning, we were ready to take that cup home," Foreman said of the 2010 team. He then cited a conversation he had this year with the co-captains, after the first semester exams had concluded, asking each why they thought the team lost. 

"And each one of the youngsters went around the table and said what they thought happened," Foreman said.

 And I said, "OK, let's looks at what each one of you said and that's what you have to dwell on, and not to allow happen this particular year. And they put their minds together, and the kids got out there and made sure everybody contributed," he said.

"We've always been a competitive team," said Alex DeWeese, a sprinter and co-captain for the indoor team. "The past two seasons we had the dual meet championship in hand but there is a separate trophy for winning the championship meet and for some reason or another, we hadn't won that.  This year, things just fell into place and we ended up doing pretty well in the championship."

Mid-distance runner and co-captain Chris Watson, a senior headed to Lehigh University, noted the meets usually have been close.

"Some we might win easily, some might come down to the last race," Watson said.  "They usually are pretty close but when everybody does what they have to do, like at the championship meet, we would win pretty handily."

Other co-captains include senior Mike Sorensen, who captains the shot putters; senior Bobby Fenwick, who manages the sprinters; junior Peter Merritt, who competes in the high jump, 800 meter run and team relays; and junior Will Meadows, who competes in the distance events.

Foremen asks his co-captains to deal with discipline and to ensure the team works hard in practice.

"I really turn the team over to them to run, so I try not to yell at the team as much," Foreman said.  "I'll get with these guys, and they'll go out and make sure the guys run."

"As a track team, we split up into different specialty groups and go to different places," Fenwick said.  "Mike will take the shot putters, and he'll be in charge of them, while Chris will be leading the mid-distance practice."

As for the training regimen, Fenwick said the team has a hard day of practice on Mondays, does specialty and technical work on Tuesdays, gets back to work on Wednesdays, then focuses on the meet at hand on Thursdays, talking in specifics about what has to be done for the meet the next day.

According to Merritt, part of the team's success is that focus.

"If we don't have a winner and get those 10 points, all the other points added up are worth quite a lot," he said.  "We get in second, third or fourth or even fifth, sixth, seventh we get people in those point slots, and while we might not have won the event, we still negate the team that did win the event."

The 151 points scored is the equivalent of winning each of the 15 events with an extra point to spare.  As it turned out, the Greyhounds won six of the events and had strong showings in most of the other contests to amass the 151-point total.

Watson set a meet record and earned 10 points by winning the 500 meter run with a time of 1:07.05.  A fifth place finish by John Simms and an eighth place finish by Chris Jackson helped Gilman total 15 points for the race.

Merritt won the 800 meter run and contributed 10 of the team's 16 points for that event, clocking in at 2:02.60.  Teammates Kevin Chen earned four points with a fifth place finish and John Stoller gained two points, crossing the line in seventh.

Meadows covered 3,200 meters in just under 10 minutes to win the longest race of the meet.  Teammate Sam Zunkeler placed second, to help the school post 18 points in this event.  A second-place finish by Meadows in the 1,600 meter run, combined with a fifth-place finish by teammate Jack Flowers, added 12 more points to the Gilman total.

The 4x400 meter relay team posted Gilman's final win of the track portion, besting second-place McDonough by more than two seconds and earning 10 points for the winners.  A second-place finish in the 4x200 and a third place in the 4x800 earned another 14 points for the Greyhounds.

Taj Amin placed second in the 55 meter dash and eighth in the 300 meter dash to earn nine points for the team.  Chris McMaster's second-place finish in the 55 meter hurdles added another eight points.

In the field portion of the championships, Merritt earned his second individual win at the high jump, clearing 5 feet 8 inches.  Michael Kane topped 12 feet 6 inches in the pole vault for the Greyhounds other win.  Eli Katz placed fifth in the pole vault, earning the team another four points.  McMaster and Simms finished two-three in the long jump for 14 points, while McMaster and teammates Jordan Britton and Fenwick combined to score seven points in the triple jump.  Hunter Goodwin rounded out the team's point total with three points via sixth place in the shot put.

With the indoor championship under its belt, the focus is now set on trying to win a third-straight outdoor championship in the spring season.

"We aren't losing many people coming from indoor, and we are gaining a couple of guys that are really going to be helpful," Fenwick said.  "So we are looking to repeat what we did last year and the year before."

One of the competitors who will join the team is Darius Jennings, who plays basketball in the winter and recently signed a letter of intent to play football at the University of Virginia.

"He's pretty quick," Foreman said of Jennings, who will race in the 100 and 200 meter dashes.

Foreman noted the outdoor team will benefit from 20 members of the junior varsity indoor team. 

And to give evidence of the strength that they will bring, that team won the indoor track championship at their level, scoring 113 points to second place McDonough's 87.