2004 SPF Girls Union County Track Championships

A long shot in the long jump. Scotch Plains freshman Amanda Bobyack fit theBilling perfectly Saturday afternoon at the Union County Track Championships atPlainfield. Until March of this year she had never long jumped and though shehad shown fast improvement her personal best of 15 feet 2 ½ inches was wellshort of what would be needed to finish in the first six scoring places. But nobody told Bobyack she didn’t belong in this elite company. On her secondto last jump she soared 16 feet 5 ½ inches to stun favored Ashley Adams ofPlainfield who had the advantage of using her home field.

“ The girls she was jumping against were much taller and more muscular than her, but I guess that did not matter all that much in theend. She was very excited when she won. I can't remember any freshman (boy or girl)winning a county championship in an individual event for us in the eight years I have been here,” said Coach Jeff Koegel. Bobyack’s shocker and victories in the triple jump Michelle Regg and the 4by 400 relay spurred the Scotch Plains Girls to a strong second place finishwith 57 pointsfinishing only behind Elizabeth. 54 of Elizabeth’s 76 points came from thetwoCintron sisters , who finished 1-2 in the shot put,discus and javelin.

Also contributing mightily to the Raiders’ success was Aja Bundy who was secondin the 400 and anchored the relay, Mary Shashaty second in the 3200 and KateZaleski second in the pole vault. Also scoring points were AllieHoynes-O’Connor sixth in the 1600, and Meghan Kelley fifth in the 400intermediate hurdles.

Bobyack’s performance is even more amazing because she did not run track ineighth grade last spring and got a late start this spring, missing many earlypractices because of rehearsals and practices from playing in the pit band inthe school play.“Amanda ran a few sprint races for us in the winter and did fairly well. Sincewe have so few people on this team, we needed to fill out events, including thejumps. It only makes sense to take your fastest sprinters and try them at thelong jump ,” said Koegel who points to Olympic champion Carl Lewis as the mostfamous example of the synergy between sprinting and long jumping.

“I had no idea that I was able to jump that far, “ said Bobyack.“ When I first started this season I was only jumping 13 to 14 feet. Throughout the practices I got help from Mr. Hush on my form but I also gotadvice from Michelle Reggand Megan Kelly, who also long jump.” “She has continued to improve at the event, and we see more room forimprovement,” added Koegel.

“Currently, her landing needs work. She lands standing just about straight up,putting her feet down when she doesn't need to. We figure she could haveanother two feet on her jumps if she does this, which would put her in the18-foot range, which is more than respectable. Coach Lionel Hush has been andwill continue to be working on the finish of her jumps.”

Bobyack doesn’t have to venture far to practice her jumps. She can actually seethe long jump pit from her house and her mother frequently watches the highschool practices from her kitchen.“This has all happened so fast for her ,” said her father Mitch. “She wasactually amazed to get a medal for her performance ,” said the elder Bobyack. “It hasn’t sunk in about what she’s accomplished.

”Bundy’s anchor performance in the relay made up for a second place finish inthe 400, a race she led until the final straightaway. “She has struggled a bitlately to finish her races off. If she can get past this, I believe she has thepotential to split high-57 or low-58 ,” said Koegel,

Zaleski was a county gymnastics champion in the balance beam last fall who isalso in her first year of track. “I talked her into coming out an giving it a try, and she has done very well , “ said Koegel. “She has good body control and an excellent strength-to-mass ratio. She is also very coachable. .”

Shashaty battled a quadriceps injury and intense heat to finish second in the3200. “The heat was brutal on Saturday. What makes it worse is that theweather has been very inconsistent, so we have not gotten the chance to acclimate ourselvesto any one particular weather pattern. I would say the high temperatures couldhave added 15-20 seconds to her time. She is also coming back from a quadriceps injury that caused her to miss quite a bit of crucial training atthe end of April and beginning of May ,” said Koegel.Koegel noted that all the point scorers are underclassmen. Now if he can onlyfind some more “novices” like Bobyack.