The Throws of a Record-Setting Season
May 3, 2012
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
While other kids have basketball hoops in their driveways, Cullen Prena and his sisters have a discus ring.
“I wish,” Cullen said Wednesday when asked if it was so.
You won’t find shot put craters in the family's lawn either.
But drive past the Prenas’ home when his sisters are home from college, and there’s a chance you’ll catch the Walled Lake Central junior and his Big Ten thrower siblings, Kari (University of Michigan) and Kelsey (Michigan State), talking over their craft.
“My sisters got me into it,” Cullen said. “It was a random summer day, and they were going to Central to throw. They asked me if I wanted to go with, and I said ‘Sure.’
“Ever since then I’ve been all into it. It’s basically taken over my life.”
Those first tosses came in the summer before Prena entered seventh grade. Five years later, he’s making a bid to go down as Michigan’s top high school thrower of all-time.
The fifth-place finisher in discus at last season’s MHSAA Division 1 Final Meet, Prena quickly has established himself as a heavy favorite this spring. He receives a Second Half High 5 this week after throwing an incredible 187 feet, 7 inches to win discus at Saturday’s Oxford Invitational, on top of also winning the shot put with a toss of 52-1.
Earlier in April, Prena topped 180 feet in discus two more times, in the process breaking both his school and then the Oakland County records that had both stood for at least 29 years according to a report by the Oakland Press.
And here’s the kicker: Prena’s top discus throw last season was a solid – but compared to now, mere – 159-9.
“His increase over the course of time, the average spectator can’t see it. But from sixth grade, he’s been training,” said Walled Lake Central boys track coach Nebojsa Stojkovic, who also works with the team’s throwers.
“You know how to gauge kids based on worth ethic and what their bodies are able to do. When freshman year he threw 144 feet, I knew the talent that was coming up.He’s got God-given ability that’s different from everyone else.”
That combination has made Prena something to behold this season.
His work ethic has benefited him with an increase in strength, evidenced by 30-40 percent improvements in all of his weight room lifts over the last year. Prena formerly played football, basketball and baseball, but decided to focus solely on weight training for track this school year in part after tearing a meniscus during his sophomore football season.
And then there’s two natural gifts for a thrower – Prena is double-jointed, allowing him increased flexibility for a stronger whip motion on his discus tosses. He also gets additional power from a wingspan that measures longer than his 6-foot-2 height.
He threw well at indoor competitions during the winter, and was tossing the discus consistently in the 170s when outdoor practice began this spring. In his team’s first meet, against White Lake Lakeland, he threw the discus 177 and then a best of 184-7, and also tossed the shot put 52-10 – more than three feet better than his previous outdoor personal-best in the latter event.
“It was hard to sleep (at night) after a meet when you throw a great throw like that,” Prena said.
Aside from some tires during workouts, Prena hasn’t tried tossing other heavy objects. “Other than my parents and my sisters; that’s about it,” he said, joking, of course.
But he's in serious pursuit of the MHSAA Finals record for discus. Prena’s best toss this season would’ve won every MHSAA Final dating back to 2003 and all seven of last season’s Finals (four Lower Peninsula, three Upper) by at least a foot.
That Finals record of 197-11 belongs to former Portage Northern standout Joey Sarantos, who set it in 2001. Prena must improve another 11 feet – which seems like a logical next step after this spring's gigantic 28-foot jump.
“Last year’s state meet ... didn’t quite go the way I wanted it to, and it’s been in the back of my mind since then,” Prena said. “Coming off of weight training, I kinda expected (the improvement). But you don’t know until you see the stuff. And then I started realizing it, and it was setting in that this is real. This is ridiculous."
PHOTOS: (Top) Walled Lake Central's Cullen Prena warms up before the discus throw that would break the Oakland County record. (Middle) Prena surveys the scene before another discus toss. His best this season is 187-7. (Photos courtesy of Walled Lake Central and David Mexicotte.)
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.)