As she steps up to the starting line for the race, freshman Tara Hain performs her pre-race rituals. She takes a deep breath in and out before touching the ground in anticipation. The gun shot sounds, and she takes off for her first event of the evening, the 100 meter hurdles.
On May 8, the CESJDS spring track and field team traveled to Gallaudet University in Washington DC for the second to last PVAC championship meet of the season. The boy’s team placed fourth overall in the meet while the girls placed seventh, tying with the Model Secondary School for the Deaf.
Head track and field coach Jason Belinkie was impressed with the team’s performance in this meet, especially since they have only had one practice since before spring break.
“Given that we had that challenge, that major obstacle, that people were gone for a few weeks, and we came back, I don’t think it could have gone any better,” Belinkie said.
Many people achieved a personal record (PR) at the meet including Hain in the 4×400 meter relay, freshman Gillian Krauthamer in the 800 meter race and the 4×400 meter relay, freshman Mali Osofsky in the 800 and 1600, junior Geoffery Rosen in the 300 meter long jump, sophomore Isaac Yourman in the 800 meter, freshman Isaiah Segal-Geetter in the 1600 meter and freshman Eve Sharp in the 800 meter.
In addition to many personal records, the team also received a number of medals. Junior Nate Szubin in the 1600 meter and the 3200 meter, and Yourman and juniors Jonah Berman, Itai Even and Adam Helman in the 4×800 meter all received gold medals.
Segal-Geetter received a silver medal in the 3200 meter, and Yourman received one in the 800 meter. Sharp received a bronze medal in the 800 meter, Berman received one in the 800 meter and Segal-Geetter in the 1600 meter.
Szubin, who is one of the team’s captains, was proud with his personal performance especially in the 1600 meter, and was named co-MVP of the meet, being the first of JDS distance runners to receive this award. He was also proud of the team’s accomplishments.
“I think I did my mile plan really well, which was just [to] go out from the front, don’t worry about the competition to see if I could kind of break the field,” Szubin said.
Since taking on a leadership role with the team, Szubin has done his best to be an inspiration in the way other teams leaders were when he first joined the team. Szubin said that his first friends on the JDS team were the seniors who welcomed him in with open arms and made him feel like a part of the track family. He intends to try to impact the team the same way.
While Szubin is an older leader on the team, some younger leaders have begun to teach the team some of the things they have learned over the time they have been running.
“The freshmen on the team this year taught me this trick for breathing that I use before races now which is really helpful, and today, for example, at lunch, we got a big junior and freshman table going on,” Szubin said. “We’re having fun talking, laughing [and] being a team.”
As a freshman and a younger member of the team, Hain thinks that the team’s dynamic is very positive, and everyone is supportive of each other and their personal goals.
“It’s such a supportive team and… it feels like a family,” Hain said. “And I don’t feel ashamed to do badly because I know that my team will always back me up.”
While this year’s spring track team was much smaller than usual, it proved the dedication of the athletes and created a more tight-knit community.
“The good part of that [a smaller team] is that everyone who was on the team was in it for the right reasons,” Belinkie said.
Additionally, this meet was the last for some people on the team this season, and according to Szubin it was a rewarding culmination of all the work the athletes put in this season to improve.
“People came to the season with goals and they’re shattering them,” Szubin said.
