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Pieces Adding Up for Addison Title Run
May 11, 2018
By Doug Donnelly
Special for Second Half
ADDISON – Aaron Wesche didn’t waste any time in setting some goals for the Addison boys track & field team.
“I told them at signups that we were going to compete for the Regional title, and our goal was to compete for the top three at the state meet,” Wesche said. “I wanted to put that out there.”
If the last few weeks of the track season end up anything like the first few, the Panthers are right on target. Wesche began building this year’s team in the middle of last season, preparing for what he and his assistants figured was going to be a strong year. Addison is ranked on top of the recent Michigan Interscholastic Track Coaches Association Division 4 team power rankings with individuals up and down the rankings list.
“We’re set up pretty good for MITCA,” he said. “I’m blessed to have a great group of juniors and seniors. We’ve turned into a well-rounded team.”
Addison scored 13 points at the 2017 MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 4 championship meet, good for 26th place. This year’s team is eyeing a big jump from that spot.
“We’ve looked at the Regional and, with some luck, we could possibly see ourselves scoring points in every event,” Wesche said. “Now, things would have to go our way, but it’s possible.”
Addison has talent throughout its lineup.
The 400 and 800-meter relay teams of Josh Brown, Dakota Knieper, Caleb Gramm and Dominic Young are steady and fast. Noah Hermansen has emerged in the 110 hurdles, and Gavin McAndrews has been a pleasant surprise in the pole vault.
Freshman Marquis Bills has been a big addition to the lineup in the high jump, where he competes with teammate Matt Sylvester. Brown and Knieper are joined in the 1,600 lineup by Jesse Mullin and Zac Steiner. Zach Morse is a strong distance runner. Knieper was all-state last year in the 400, and Young ranks among the top 10 in the division in the 100, according to the MITCA rankings.
In the field events, standout athlete Donovan Underwood is expected to push for a high finish in both the shot put and discus.
Underwood is trying to earn all-state notice in his third sport in this, his senior campaign. He was honorable mention again in football after compiling 91 tackles and 16 for loss as the Panthers tied for the Cascades Conference championship and made the playoffs. In wrestling he finished in the top eight in his weight class, and now he has a shot to improve on last year’s fourth-place showing at the MHSAA Finals in the shot put.
“Our goals are pretty high,” he said. “We can achieve them if we just stay focused on what is ahead of us.”
Underwood is one of four seniors on the 29-member track team, up six from last year’s 23 athletes. He said the group of seniors have been playing sports together since a young age and has always felt by the time they became seniors, the Panthers would be putting out some good sports teams. They haven’t disappointed.
“Ever since we were young, we played football together and have always wanted to make everything we do, including track, as fun as we can,” Underwood said.
In track, he credits Wesche with teaching him the right technique for the throws. Wesche was a throws coach at Siena Heights University in Adrian from 2008-2012.
“Coach Wesche is an amazing coach,” Underwood said. “He helps us a lot.”
Wesche is in his 18th year teaching at Addison and has coached track for a good chunk of those, other than his years at Siena Heights.
“In high school, I did track, but I wasn’t a star or anything,” he said. “I was more of a technique guy. I worked at having the best technique and how to refine that technique.”
At Addison, he’s also been a master at getting kids out for track and putting them in the right spots in the lineup. He introduces freshmen at Addison to track while they are in his classroom and displays some trophies and other track memorabilia in his room to help get the buzz going about the sport.
“The team we have this year, we started to put in place last year,” he said. “We started moving kids around then, finding hurdlers and working on the relays. Some of it was kind of luck. Things have worked out pretty well.”
At one point, he lined up the entire team to find someone to run the hurdles. Hermansen emerged and is now a threat to score points at the Finals.
“This is the most complete team we’ve ever had,” he said.
The Panthers are scheduled to compete at the Hillsdale Invitational this weekend and have an important Cascades Conference dual meet with Hanover- Horton on Tuesday.
“They have won the last several conference championships,” Wesche said. “As coaches, we still have to sit down and figure out where we are going to score points against them. That’s going to be a dog fight.”
After that, Addison has the Regional and the Cascades Conference championship meet and, hopefully for Panthers fans, the MITCA and MHSAA meets left to go.
“The most important four weeks are coming up right now,” he said. We’ve got to start shining. I want us to be known as a blue-collar team. We aren’t a team with a superstar. We come to work every single day and grind it out.”
Doug Donnelly has served as a sports and news reporter and city editor over 25 years, writing for the Daily Chief-Union in Upper Sandusky, Ohio from 1992-1995, the Monroe Evening News from 1995-2012 and the Adrian Daily Telegram since 2013. He's also written a book on high school basketball in Monroe County and compiles record books for various schools in southeast Michigan. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Lenawee and Monroe counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Addison thrower Donovan Underwood unloads a discus toss during a meet this season. (Middle) Dakota Knieper charges down the straightaway during one of his races. (Photos courtesy of the Addison boys track & field program.)
![Saginaw Heritage track & field](/sites/default/files/2022-08/220801_Jibowu_2H.png)
Lessons Learned on Track Have Jibowu's Business Surging to Quick Success
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
August 1, 2022
Athletics showed Soj Jibowu just how far he could push himself.
All the time spent on the track, working to become the state’s best high school 400-meter runner, and then more than that, taught him to stretch beyond what he thought were his limits.
So, when it came time to make a decision on whether to jump fully into his apparel company, Varlo, or keep it as a part-time side venture, the 2001 Saginaw Heritage graduate knew he could take himself to another level if needed.
Jibowu is the founder and CEO of Varlo, a clothing company that specializes in outfitting triathletes, but also offers casual wear for men and women. The company is just over three years old, but its clientele includes hundreds of triathletes, eight professionals, three NCAA programs and even hospitals. Merchandise is sold in eight countries.
All of that is validation for Jibowu, who took the leap to pursuing the company full-time just one year into its existence.
“When I resigned (from a medical sales job) to do this full-time, my wife was pregnant with our second child, my daughter wasn’t even walking yet,” said Jibowu, who now lives in Cherry Hill, N.J., with his wife and two young children. “Where was my state of mind to leave my very comfortable, high-paying job to pursue this – to sell clothes?”
His mind was in the same place that helped him reach tremendous heights as a runner, both at Heritage and Central Michigan University.
Jibowu, who was born in Nigeria and spent much of his childhood in Huntsville, Ala., was part of some incredible Heritage teams. He graduated a year behind eventual NFL safety Stuart Schweigert, who he ran with on the Finals-winning 1,600 relay in 2000. Another member of that relay was Derold Sligh, who won the 400-meter Finals title that year, setting the Lower Peninsula Division 1 Finals record in the process. The Hawks were LP Division 1 runners-up as a team that season.
“I ran track when I was younger, and I was terrible,” Jibowu said. “In high school, if I look back at it, I probably would have called it impostor syndrome. I think that was me up until maybe like somewhere in my senior year when I started to think, ‘I’m pretty fast.’ … I had so many dominant people around me, in my mind, I was still the slow guy.”
As a senior, Jibowu erased that self-doubt. He led Heritage to its first, and still only, Division 1 Finals title, running the 400 in 48.28 and breaking the record Sligh had set the year prior.
It was working to get to that point that Jibowu still credits with his ability to push himself in all things.
“I preach this all the time: if you have the ability to be involved in sports at a young age, do it,” Jibowu said. “It’s a gift, first of all. You don’t know any better when you’re young, you think you’re just training your body, but what’s really, truly occurring is you’re training your mind and building discipline. You’re building your character as far as who you are as a person. What is your will? How far are you willing to push? Am I able to be coached? Am I able to learn? Am I able to lose over and over again and keep going? Am I able to navigate to feel what it’s like to win? What you’re truly developing is how to manage and handle life.”
Jibowu said he didn’t finalize his college decision until late in the process, as he had to work on his test scores into the summer. While at CMU, he majored in biomedical science and chemistry, and he excelled, admitting he was a much better student in college than in high school.
He was also reunited with Sligh on the Chippewas track team, and had a successful career. He was regularly within the top five in the 200 and 400 in the Mid-American Conference, and won a MAC title in the 400 at the 2004 indoor championships. His personal bests in the races were 21.19 and 46.81, respectively.
After graduating from CMU, Jibowu began working as a pharmaceutical rep, then moved into medical sales.
While he remained active, it wasn’t until he took a trip to Chicago that he discovered triathlons.
“I remember seeing these really cool bikes and these really fit people, and then they jumped into Lake Michigan,” he said. “And I didn’t know that was possible, because I didn’t grow up swimming. I didn’t know that volume of people knew how to swim like that. Then they get out of Lake Michigan, jump on their bikes and they’re flying. Then they’re sprinting a 6K and I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, these guys are the real freaking deal.’ I was hooked and wanted to start competing.”
As he began competing, the wheels for his current venture began turning. At this point, Jibowu was living out east and had worked for a pair of successful start-ups in the medical industry. That helped give him knowledge, and confidence, to make his own moves.
“I had always been into clothes and fashion, and how you express yourself with what you wear,” Jibowu said. “There was an opportunity there. The sport of triathlon is as old as me; it started in (1983). That’s a baby. That’s like basketball without the 3-point line. There’s so much opportunity for innovation.”
With that, Varlo was born, and it has since thrived, with Jibowu and the lessons he learned on a track in Saginaw paving the way.
“If you are in high school and have the ability to be in a sport, it’s a gift,” he said. “At that young of an age, truly learning to manage the trials and tribulations of life. That is a gift.”
2021-22 Made in Michigan
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PHOTOS (Top) At left, Heritage’s Soj Jibowu wins the 400 meters during the 2001 Saginaw Valley League championship meet. At right, Jibowu is the founder and CEO of the Varlo clothing company. (Middle) Jibowu’s company specializes in outfitting triathletes, and he has taken up the sport after a successful college track & field career. (Heritage photo courtesy of Saginaw News/MLive; current photos courtesy of Soj Jibowu.)