Norris Center Offers Track Athletes 'Perfect' Early-Season Indoor Opportunity
By
John Vrancic
Special for MHSAA.com
April 13, 2022
SAULT STE. MARIE — Weather conditions in early April can sometimes be frightful in the Upper Peninsula.
On a day with snow showers falling outside, eight schools took advantage of an opportunity to compete in Friday’s indoor track & field meet at Lake Superior State University’s Norris Center.
“The first meet of the season is very important to me,” said Alpena senior Madi Szymanski, who plans to run cross country and track at Northern Michigan University. “This gives me a starting base and a better idea of where I’m at. I prefer to run outdoors, but I’m very grateful to be indoors today. Conditions are always perfect inside.”
Szymanski was a triple-winner in the LSSU Large School Yooper Invitational, taking the 800-meter run in 2 minutes, 28.26 seconds, the 1,600 (5:27.83) and helping the Wildcats take the 1,600 relay (4:44.39).
“I’ve been doing indoor meets during the winter,” she said. “I go to Saginaw Valley a lot and have been to Central Michigan and Eastern Michigan, but this is my favorite 200-meter track. I always look forward to coming here. It’s real exciting and my adrenalin is very high. It’s always great to do well in the first races.”
This marked the first of just three indoor meets in the U.P. this season. Many U.P. schools were scheduled to compete in the Michigan Tech Keweenaw Classic on Tuesday in Houghton with another indoor event taking place April 21 at LSSU.
Both Alpena teams were crowned champions, and the two Manistique teams placed fourth.
Manistique junior Grant Mason won the boys 400 in a personal-best 56.88 seconds, and the girls opened with a victory in the 3,200 relay (11:34.36).
“I expected it to be a little harder on a 200 track, but ended up with my best time,” said Mason. “I had a pretty good start. It’s real important to get this meet in. It’s a lot warmer in here. Early-season meets aren’t very easy to find up here. We had some good competition up here today. The downstate schools are ahead of us because they get an opportunity to see some real good competition.”
The Emeralds finished three seconds ahead of the field in the girls 3,200 relay.
“We’re pretty happy with our time,” said sophomore Emma Jones, who led off that relay. “We still have snow on our track. We’ve been working on our handoffs inside which is not the same, especially on a 200-meter track. It feels like you’re going faster. It’s pretty important for us to get this meet in because we haven’t been outside. This is the first time many of us have been in our events this year. It was good to see different competition today. This is definitely pushing us to our new potential.”
Junior Kelsey Muth, who took the baton from Jones, had similar thoughts.
“It was an awesome feeling to win it,” she said. “We went into it not knowing what to expect. That was a real good starting point for us. Emma and I had a real good handoff, but overall we were a little shaky. Our athletic director (Nate Zaremba) has been scheduling meets (we) need to reach the next level. We’re excited about going downstate for the first time. We’re hoping for nice weather down there.”
Jones placed second in the 400 (1:10.14) and Muth was fourth (1:11.64) for the Emeralds, who resume in Friday’s Ram Scram at Harbor Springs.
“I think today was a good first showing,” said Emeralds’ coach Amy Nixon. “In the first meet of the year, you never know what to expect and we had some girls step up. Some of the new girls stepped into events which others couldn’t. We’re proud of them for being willing to do that. Now we know what the girls are capable of doing. It’s fun to compete again.”
The Manistique boys secured fourth place by taking third in the 1,600 relay (4:03.25).
“Overall, the meet went well,” said Emeralds boys coach Cody Kangas. “Some guys did some real good things, and Grant did a great job in the 400.”
John Vrancic has covered high school sports in the Upper Peninsula since joining the Escanaba Daily Press staff in 1985. He is known most prominently across the peninsula for his extensive coverage of cross country and track & field that frequently appears in newspapers from the Wisconsin border to Lake Huron. He received the James Trethewey Award for Distinguished Service in 2015 from the Upper Peninsula Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association.
PHOTO Athletes took advantage of the opportunity to compete indoors at Friday’s Yooper Invitational at Lake Superior State University. (Photo by Robert Roos/Sault Ste. Marie Evening News.)
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.)