By Lucas Mann
The Fourth Annual Region 9 Middle School Track and Field Series was held at the Murry Bergtraum High School Field, on the sweltering morning of Fri., June 1. With temperatures around 90 degrees and an unforgiving midday sun, it would have been hard to blame even adult runners for withering. Not these kids, though. Flushed with team spirit and positively loopy on the prospect of missing school to run around, the competitors finished the event with strong performances all around.
As Manhattan Academy of Technology coach and event organizer John De Matteo said before the award ceremony, “Running is about trying your hardest and finding out what is inside of you.” Moments later, when co-organizer Victor Ramsey from the Department of Education asked who had met somebody new at the meet, everyone raised their hand.
The team spirit could not have been exhibited better than it was by Battery Park City’s I.S. 89, a newcomer to the competition. Despite it’s lack of experience, the team came out and had a solid overall day. “We made sure that we got to practice twice a week,” said sixth grader Stephan Cho, who participated in the 75-meter and the relay, “Monday and Friday for at least an hour.” And amazingly, they did not seem to mind all of the running.
Eighth grader Albert Hohenstein could not contain his happiness as he exclaimed, “I’ve always enjoyed running so much because I’m extremely hyperactive.
“It’s also great exercise,” Cho added.
Besides their enthusiasm, I.S. 89 believed they had another factor on their side, a young man named Dontree Riangkrul. As sixth grader Sarah Brown put it, nodding at Dontree, “we have God on our side.” While she exaggerated of course, Brown was talking about one of the best competitors. Riangkrul finished first in the mile, first in the long jump and second in the 75-meter. He won the day’s M.V.P. honors for the sixth grade boy’s division.
His focus was not on his own personal accomplishments, though. “We do well as a team,” Riangkrul emphasized. “It’s a fun team, we all get to do something, and I want them all to be able to come to the stadium with me [the four best finishers in each event move on to the finals at Icahn Stadium on Randall’s Island].” His teammates shared his excitement. Brown, along with Riangkrul, earned the chance to represent her team at the finals and said, “We plan on making a petition so the whole team can come. We’re the smallest team in the competition and we all had to do well just to be here. I really want the whole team to be there.”
Despite the midday heat, the runners had reserved enough energy to compete well and to cheer wildly for their team. The fact that earlier in the day an ambulance to cart off those with heat exhaustion was lost on the sweaty kids in the stands, craning their necks to see how their friends were doing on the track.
“Some people overheated, but I was okay,” said Senna Lay, a sixth grader from I.S. 89, who placed second in the mile event. “You just have to focus on the track and not switch lanes.” The preparedness and durability of I.S. 89, as well as their track program as a whole, can be attributed to the non-profit organization Manhattan Youth, which runs the school’s after school track program.
“After the school day ends, we take over,” said Theseus Roche, who works at Manhattan Youth and helps coach the 89 track team. “This isn’t a program run out of the school physical education program, so these kids have to show up after school on their own. They were really tenacious and they came and wanted to practice even when it was raining.”
Their training and emphasis on team spirit paid off when, collectively, they won the last award of the day: The Newcomers Award. “These guys have never been here before,” De Matteo said, “and they came out and raced great. They deserve this.”
Certainly not new to the competition, De Matteo’s team was impressive in their own right, representing Downtown Manhattan with a second place overall finish. M.A.T. will send students to Icahn Stadium for 11 different events. They scored first in the sixth grade girl’s relay; the seventh and eighth grade boy’s relay; the seventh and eighth grade girl’s shot put, mile, and 75-meter dash, and the sixth grade girl’s 300-meter. Additionally, out of eight runners who were given M.V.P. awards for the day, three came from M.A.T. Patty Rosa was an M.V.P. for sixth grade girls, while Tafari McKenzie and Shakirra Harewood split the honors for seventh and eighth grade girls. 15 competitors from M.A.T. will be competing at Icahn Stadium, which De Matteo notes is a new team record. Only Robert Wagner Middle School, from the Upper West Side, had a better overall performance. Wagner, while dominating, boasts a student body of over 1,300, while M.A.T. only has 388.
To finish off the day, there was an awards ceremony, where the gold, silver and bronze medalists from each event got to stand on makeshift podium and soak up the applause of parents, coaches and every other competitor sitting on the bleachers.
For I.S. 89, the strong showing in their first District 9 Track and Field Series was just the beginning. With three runners entering the championships at Icahn Stadium and a petition in the works to get themselves the right to cheer for their teammates, their track and field season is far from over. And their careers will not end at Randall’s Island. Hohenstein, looking ahead to high school next year, said that he planned on running for the school team, no matter where he went.
