Reigning Champs Lead Again at Zeeland
By
Tom Markowski
Special for Second Half
June 4, 2016
ZEELAND – Orchard Lake St. Mary’s coach Sean Clouse said his team felt the pressure of defending the school’s track and field championship all season.
Noah Jacobs of Corunna said the goal of breaking the nine-minute mark in the 3,200-meter run has been with him since the cross country season ended.
Both St. Mary’s and Jacobs made history Saturday at the Lower Peninsula Division 2 Track & Field Finals held at Zeeland Stadium.
St. Mary’s became the first boys team to win back-to-back titles since Farmington Hills Harrison won three straight (2001-03), as the Eaglets nosed out Mason, 46 points to 44. Zeeland East was third with 33 points, Macomb Lutheran North was fourth with 33 and Grand Rapids Kenowa Hills placed fifth with 29.5.
Kahlee Hamler of St. Mary’s won the 100 dash (10.99) and was on the winning 800 relay team that set a meet record with a time of 1:27.71.
Jacobs became the first LP Division 2 runner to break 9 minutes in the 3,200, as he won with a time of 8:55.57.
Alex Klemm of Macomb Lutheran North set the meet record in the high jump with a jump of 7 feet. Klemm’s previous best was 6-11. Klemm will attend University of Michigan on a track scholarship, and he said he hopes to compete in the long jump and pole vault in addition to the high jump.
“It’s pretty unreal right now,” Klemm said after winning his first individual title.
Both Hamler and Jacobs are juniors.
There were other strong individual performances, including the showing by Mason’s athletes in the field events and another of the state’s top distance runners, Morgan Beadlescomb of Algonac, taking the 1,600 run with a personal-best time.
But it was the Eaglets’ hurdlers and sprinters, led by Hamler, and Corunna’s Jacobs who rose to the top.
“As far as times, it was a bad day,” Hamler said. “But we got things done. It was one of my slower days. My personal best is a 10.75 (in the 100, two weeks ago in the Regional). I wasn’t loose enough. I wasn’t in my right mindset.
“Oh yeah, we had pressure. We worked hard to get here.”
In addition to the sprints, the Eaglets picked up valuable points in the 300 and 110 hurdles. Richard Bowen won the 300 (37.46) and Shermond Dabney placed third. Dabney was fourth in the 110, and both ran on the 800 relay.
Jacobs finished second to Beadlescomb at the LP Division 2 Cross County Final last fall by four seconds. Beadlescomb scratched from the 3,200 on Saturday, saying his right knee wasn’t 100 percent healthy. Jacobs won the event last season with a time of 9:27.49, but lost the competitor who might’ve helped him set a fast pace.
“The clock will tell you what I wanted to do,” Jacobs said. “I wanted to break nine (minutes). It makes it hard (when a runner is so far out in front). For me to reach my goal, that’s what I’ve got to do. They didn’t want to go out that fast.
“It’s so surreal. I’m so blessed. I’m so fortunate to stay healthy. The weather cooled down a bit. It was a perfect day. This is my favorite event. If I had to choose from running in the 3,200 relay with my teammates or this I’d take the relay and run with my teammates in a heartbeat. But, individually, this is it. It’s the kind of event I can thrive in.”
It was a bittersweet ending for Beadlescomb. He wanted to run both the 1,600 and the 3,200, but it wouldn’t have been the right decision.
“I won, but I wasn’t too happy,” he said. “I was tired. I don’t know how to explain it. It just happens. When I wanted to make a move it wasn’t there. I had to go back to third. The second time I tried it was there.”
When told he set a personal best in the 1,600 (4:13.18), Beadlescomb was flabbergasted.
“A good race for me is when I start at 2:07 (at the halfway point) and I would hold on from there,” he said. “Today I started with a 2:10. It was crazy.”
Justin Scavarda of Mason won the discus with a throw of 182 feet, 6 inches and the shot put with a put of 57-10½. Mason’s Jarrett VanHavel won the pole vault (15-3), providing the punch for the Bulldogs’ strong team total.
PHOTOS: (Top) The Orchard Lake St. Mary's boys team celebrates its second straight MHSAA championship. (Middle) Algonac's Morgan Beadlescomb leads the pack on the way to winning the 1,600. (Photos by Dave McCauley/RunMichigan.com.)
Ovid-Elsie Running Legend Darling Seeking to 'Win the Day' on Trading Floor
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
August 13, 2024
Maverick Darling’s competitive running days have been behind him for nearly a decade, but the eight-time MHSAA Finals champion from Ovid-Elsie isn’t done competing.
Darling, who was also a five-time All-American at Wisconsin, is now fighting for wins on the Viking Forest Products lumber trading floor in Minnesota.
“Our trading floor is very unique,” Darling said. “We have 60 traders, and probably 30-35 of them are former student-athletes in college. It’s very competitive, but kind of like a locker room. It’s kind of a unique way for me to still be competitive even though I’m not in athletics. I really love it.”
Darling is a commodity trader at Viking Forest, trading mostly OSB, plywood and dimensional lumber to buyers throughout the United States. He lives with his fiancé Danielle and their two dogs in Plymouth, Minn., a suburb of Minneapolis.
Lessons learned while working toward Finals titles on the dirt roads of Ovid and national goals on the trails of Madison, Wis., are helping him find success again.
“My lessons I learned from running and the reward, whether good, great or OK, is that no matter the day, you have to go put in the effort and work, and it carries over to my work,” he said. “I now literally start over every day. We had a saying: ‘Win the day.’ And ‘Win the day’ kind of means something different for every day. I try to apply that to my life. It’s motivating to be successful every day.”
Friendly competition between teammates leading to greater success also carried over from cross country and track to the trading floor.
“We have a department where it feels almost like my cross country team in college,” he said. “One guy will put up 30 orders that day, and we’re all happy for that person. The synergy between the group is awesome. But it motivates me to be like, tomorrow that’s going to be me.”
Darling had spent his first three years out of Wisconsin running professionally and had coaching stops at Iona and Cal-Berkeley after that. But when the pandemic hit, he stepped away from coaching and made the move to trading.
That ended a spectacular career in the sport, which was actually second choice for most of Darling’s childhood.
Growing up, he was a top snowmobile racer, along with his brother.
“My first (high school) cross country race, I took seventh,” Darling said. “I didn’t know better, but that’s pretty good. My mom was like, ‘Seventh? You know, we’re used to first or second (in snowcross).’ We’re not a running family. I started at about 18 minutes in the 5K, and at the state meet I finished eighth and ran 16:13. I was like, ‘OK, maybe this is something I can really be good at.’”
It was at the end of his junior year, after winning his heat at the Nike Outdoor Nationals, that Darling turned his entire focus to running. By that time, he had already won two Division 3 cross country titles, two 3,200-meter titles and one 1,600 at MHSAA Finals.
He was training often, but knew he was undertrained because of the limitations on where and when he could run during mid-Michigan winters. Colleges knew it, too, and that led to a barrage of communication as soon as they were able to reach out.
“I probably had 150 of those (hand-written letters) sent to the house,” Darling said. “I would get two to three phone calls a night after July 1. It wasn’t like overwhelming, because I was pretty confident at that point where I wanted to go to school.”
Darling committed to Wisconsin on the day of the Lower Peninsula Cross Country Finals his senior year. He also won his third Finals title that day with a then-Division 3 record time of 14:52. At the time, it was the third fastest time ever run in Michigan.
He would later win his second straight 1,600/3,200 double at the Track & Field Finals, running 8:58 in the 3,200 during the season, which was the 12th-best high school time in the country that year.
The choice to go to Wisconsin was based on his drive to be challenged as much as possible.
“I thought, ‘If I come into this room, I’m probably the eighth or ninth best runner in this room – maybe,’” Darling said. “I had such a great recruiting trip. I grew up in Ovid, and everything I ran there was pretty much dirt roads. Wisconsin has a lot of dirt trails, and I kind of loved that. I could run from our locker room and be on a trail in a mile, mile and a half.”
Darling’s collegiate career proved he had made the right decision. He was the Big Ten Freshman of the Year for the 2009 cross country season, and an All-American in 2010 and 2012. He was a three-time All-American in track, as well.
The Badgers also had massive team success during Darling’s tenure, winning a cross country national title in 2011, four Big Ten cross country titles and two Big Ten track & field titles.
Darling was surrounded by great runners throughout his time in Madison, including close friend Mohammed Ahmed, who finished fourth in the 10,000 meters at this Olympics, one spot behind another Michigan distance star, Grand Blanc’s Grant Fisher.
Watching the results of a distance boom he was a big part of has been a joy for Darling this summer.
“I thought I was pretty good, then watching these guys – it’s jealousy,” he said with a laugh. “And also, it’s just cool to see. Michigan is one of the best distance states men’s and women’s-wise. It’s great to see them not only be on the international level, but to have that success.”
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PHOTOS (Top) At left, Maverick Darling crosses the finish line during a race as an Ovid-Elsie senior in 2007; at right Darling poses with fiancé Danielle. (Middle) Darling rounds a turn during a high school race. (Below) Darling and Danielle enjoy a sunset over the water with her parents. (Photos courtesy of Maverick Darling.)