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Performance: Lakeland's Grace Stark
June 2, 2017
Grace Stark
White Lake Lakeland sophomore – Track & Field
The Eagles’ speedy standout has made significant strides – literally – this season, cutting more than a second off her fastest 100-meter hurdles time from 2016. How much she’s improved in that race gained the most notice at Friday’s Oakland County Championships when Stark won in 13.54 seconds, earning the Michigan Army National Guard “Performance of the Week.” If she can repeat that time at Saturday’s Lower Peninsula Division 1 Finals, she’ll break the all-Finals record set by Ann Arbor Pioneer’s Candice Davis in 2003.
Stark’s fastest 100 hurdles time as a freshman was 14.64 seconds, and she also ran 11.82 in the 100 dash. She approached the dash personal record as well at the Oakland County meet, winning in 11.86. She’s undefeated in both the 100 dash and 100 hurdles this season, plus won a Regional title in the 200 in a personal-record 24.99 seconds. Stark owns Lakeland’s records in the 100, 100 hurdles and 200 and as part of the 400 and 800 relays, the last two helped of course by a number of talented teammates, including a strong senior class finishing up this weekend.
After developing bursitis in a hip over the summer, Stark took six weeks off from training. She upped her workouts to near-normal in December and competed indoor before showing her advancing speed on the outdoor track. Also a gymnast during elementary and middle school, Stark focuses solely on track now but said her time on the mat helped her improve physically and become more disciplined. She carries a 3.9 grade-point average, showing discipline and determination in the classroom as well.
Coach John Kababik said: "Grace is the fastest sprinter that I have coached in 40 years of coaching Lakeland girls track. What makes her so good is not only the talent she was born with, but the single-minded determination to be the best. She runs track both in season and out as a club runner. Grace was very good as a freshman, but she has improved by a full second over the last year in the hurdles. For sprinters to improve that much is not common. She came into high school fast, but she’s getting better due to the fact she’s so conscious of her technique. She’s just driven. She wants to be better, and she’s so knowledgeable that she’ll talk to me about former Olympic champions and the techniques they used. Grace will continue to break records and improve because that is who she is: that is part of her personality."
Performance Point: “I think I had a better start that day,” Stark said of the Oakland County hurdles race. “I got out to the first hurdle, and actually I’ve been working on my arms – working on not raising over hurdles, but keeping them low and right in front of me. … I thought I’d pulled off a good time, but I didn’t know it was good enough for a state record. I hit the last hurdle, and I didn’t know how much that slowed me down.”
Give it up for Gail: “Gail Devers (a U.S. Olympic gold medalist in 1992 and 1996), she did the 100 and she did the hurdles too, and she’s the big person I look up to. I’ve been told she has a similar body structure to me, so I thought, well, she’s my height, she did the hurdles and the dash, so she’s very similar to me. And she’s someone I’ve been told to watch by my coaches."
Mat time pays off: “(Gymnastics) made me stronger, my whole body. I did a lot of sprints toward the vault table, and I thought that helped. And the technique we had; it taught me a lot about discipline, helped me prevent injuries, all the workouts that we did.”
Fun to be fast: “I like the pressure of (racing). I like being out on the line, going off and being in the race. I like the thrill of it, really. Not knowing who is going to win, how the race is going to turn out. And giving all of yourself to something you care about is really fun.”
Difference in the details: “I take time with things, make sure they’re done right before I finish them. I think that reflects in both (athletics and academics) how I get stuff done. I’m very critical of myself. If it’s not done almost perfect, I find something to work on or something to fix.”
- Geoff Kimmerly, Second Half editor
Every week during the 2016-17 school year, Second Half and the Michigan Army National Guard will recognize a “Performance of the Week" from among the MHSAA's 750 member high schools.
The Michigan Army National Guard provides trained and ready forces in support of the National Military Strategy, and responds as needed to state, local, and regional emergencies to ensure peace, order, and public safety. The Guard adds value to our communities through continuous interaction. National Guard soldiers are part of the local community. Guardsmen typically train one weekend per month and two weeks in the summer. This training maintains readiness when needed, be it either to defend our nation's freedom or protect lives and property of Michigan citizens during a local natural disaster.
Previous 2016-17 honorees:
May 25: Brendon Gouin, Gaylord golf – Read
May 18: Hannah Ducolon, Bay City All Saints softball – Read
May 11: Mason Phillips, Salem track & field – Read
May 4: Lillian Albaugh, Farwell track & field – Read
April 27: Amber Gall, Shepherd track & field – Read
April 20: Sloane Teske, East Grand Rapids tennis – Read
March 30: Romeo Weems, New Haven basketball – Read
March 23: Jaycie Burger and Maddie Clark, Pittsford basketball – Read
March 16: Camden Murphy, Novi swimming & diving – Read
March 9: Ben Freeman, Walled Lake Central wrestling – Read
March 2: Joey Mangner, Chelsea swimming & diving – Read
Feb. 23: Isabelle Nguyen, Grosse Pointe North gymnastics – Read
Feb. 16: Dakota Hurbis, Saline swimming & diving – Read
Feb. 2: Foster Loyer, Clarkston basketball – Read
Jan. 26: Nick Jenkins, Detroit Catholic Central wrestling – Read
Jan. 19: Eileene Naniseni, Mancelona basketball – Read
Jan. 12: Rory Anderson, Calumet hockey – Read
Dec. 15: Demetri Martin, Big Rapids basketball – Read
Dec. 1: Rodney Hall, Detroit Cass Tech football – Read
Nov. 24: Ally Cummings, Novi volleyball – Read
Nov. 17: Chloe Idoni, Fenton volleyball – Read
Nov. 10: Adelyn Ackley, Hart cross country – Read
Nov. 3: Casey Kirkbride, Mattawan soccer – Read
Oct. 27: Colton Yesney, Negaunee cross country – Read
Oct. 20: Varun Shanker, Midland Dow tennis – Read
Oct. 13: Anne Forsyth, Ann Arbor Pioneer cross country – Read
Oct. 6: Shuaib Aljabaly, Coldwater cross country – Read
Sept. 29: Taylor Seaman, Brighton swimming & diving – Read
Sept. 22: Maggie Farrell, Battle Creek Lakeview cross country – Read
Sept. 15: Franki Strefling, Buchanan volleyball – Read
Sept. 8: Noah Jacobs, Corunna cross country – Read
PHOTO: (Top) White Lake Lakeland's Grace Stark clears a hurdle during a race this season. (Middle) Stark begins to break away from the pack. (Action photos courtesy of the White Lake Lakeland athletic department; head shot courtesy of the Oakland Press.)
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There's No Limiting Boyne City Vaulter
May 4, 2018
By Dennis Chase
Special for Second Half
BOYNE CITY – Anna Harmeling is a smart, multi-talented, grounded 18-year-old.
Well, grounded except when she’s tracking her speed down the runway, then hurtling her 5-foot-5 frame into the air to clear a bar in the pole vault.
It’s an event in which she’s become quite accomplished. In a meet last Thursday at Harbor Springs, the Boyne City senior broke her own school record three times, clearing 11-6, 11-9 and finally 12 feet.
Harmeling is now the fourth vaulter in the state, and the first in Lower Peninsula Division 3, to clear 12 feet this weather-abbreviated season, according to athletic.net.
“Going for four PRs in a day is tough – she almost had 12-4,” Ramblers pole vault coach Andy Bryant said. “It’s an emotional rollercoaster. You’re celebrating one jump, but then you have to quickly re-focus for the next.”
That breakout afternoon was a confidence builder for Harmeling, who admittedly has struggled adjusting to a bigger 13-foot pole. She went 11-1 a year ago to break Katie Martin’s school record, but then had trouble finishing jumps and exceeding that height, including during the indoor season, as she tried to transition to the new pole.
“I was stuck there for almost a year,” she said.
Then, the Ram Scram at Harbor Springs happened.
“She’s finally getting comfortable with the longer pole,” head coach Andy Place said. “We’re excited for her. It’s been an adjustment. You need a longer pole to go higher, but you have to adjust your steps, and when to bend the pole. There’s a technique to it.”
Even at Harbor Springs, Harmeling reverted to her old pole to clear 10-6.
“Then, (Bryant) said, ‘OK, you’re going back to the new pole,’” Anna’s mother Andrea said. “It just clicked for her after that.”
“I had to apologize to Anna afterwards,” Bryant said. “I didn’t celebrate that much when she went 11-6 and 11-9 because I knew she was going to make 12.
“I told her when she changed (poles) she had to be patient. The timing is different. It’s hard to jump from one pole to another. But I knew once she started to get it down, the heights would come - and it finally happened. It’s a lot of stress off her shoulders now. She knows she can do it. Now, it’s working on the technical things that college vaulters work on.”
Like form.
Harmeling said with better technique she could have cleared 12-4 that day.
“I had the height, but I need to work on tightening my form to keep pushing that record up,” she said.
How high can she jump? She doesn’t know.
“I don’t know what my limits are,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve reached my peak. There’s more to learn. And I’m going to keep trying until I hit those limits, which is hopefully never.”
It’s been an interesting journey for the Stanford-bound Harmeling – and Bryant, who recruited her as a freshman.
Since few athletes gravitate to pole vaulting, Bryant, a science teacher at the high school, looks for students who are athletic and coachable.
This was an exception: Harmeling was not an athlete.
But Bryant, who had her in class, saw potential.
“Physically, I probably wouldn’t have approached her,” he said. “She was a teeny little freshman who had never played sports. But I saw her determination in the classroom, how she attacked her academics. I thought let’s give this a try. She’s a clean slate. She has no bad habits (from playing other sports).”
Bryant, who has been coaching the sport 20-plus years, had to not only convince Anna, but her parents Mike and Andrea, too.
“We went to a parent-teacher conference and met with the science teacher,” Andrea recalled. “My husband and I are doctors, so we’re science people. We were excited about the conference. Andy Bryant was her science teacher. When we walked in he said, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, she’s good. She’s fine with science. Now, has she chosen a sport?’ My husband and I looked at him and said we’re not really sports people. I said we think of math as a sport.”
“That’s part of why Anna wanted to try it – to prove to us math wasn’t the only sport,” added Mike, laughing.
“(Bryant) said he thought she would be really good at pole vaulting. It sounded interesting, so we said, ‘Sure, why not, let her try.’”
Pole vaulting is not an easy event to learn. Anna quickly found that out.
Boyne City has a vault box in its gymnasium floor so vaulters can work on their craft during the offseason. Training sessions typically draw vaulters from across the region, who come to train with Bryant, a former vaulter at Central Michigan University.
It’s also a testing ground for new vaulters to see if they will like it before spring practice begins.
Harmeling, however, had research to do first.
“I had to look it up online and watch a video,” she acknowledged. “I didn’t understand the concept. That first day wasn’t good at all. I had no idea what I was doing. I was terrified trying my first jump. But, I thought, I can’t end it on a bad day. I, at least, have to do well enough before I quit.”
Well enough was good enough for Bryant.
“That first practice I ran her through some preliminary drills, and she just floored me,” he said. “I remember telling my wife I haven’t been this excited about a kid in a long time. She’s not only coachable, she’s smart.
“When you meet her, you can see that determination in her eyes. I could tell the first week of school (her freshman year). She is a kid who will find a way to get more out of an assignment, more out of a question, than you intended. You ask any teacher and they’ll say she challenges you in a good way. You put something in front of her and she’ll make it better. She’s always pushing that limit. That’s the quality I zeroed in on.”
Harmeling tackled pole vaulting like she does her classwork – with a vengeance. If she wasn’t practicing or working on plyometrics, she was in the weight room gaining strength.
“A lot of young athletes today want the quick hit,” Bryant said. “They want to be No. 1 with minimal work. It’s so refreshing to see a kid work her tail off to reach her goals. In season, out of season, she’s there. Now, she has a great chance to win at the state meet.”
Harmeling finished fourth at the MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 3 Finals the last two years.
It took one year to make her way on to Bryant’s classroom wall, where he posts pictures of vaulters. He started with collegiate and world class vaulters, but he’s gradually replaced those with his own jumpers. The standards: Boys must jump at least 12 feet, girls 10.
“He told me, ‘If you jump high, I’ll put your picture up here, but you have to work hard,” Harmeling said.
Bryant started the board to attract interest in the discipline.
“Kids look at the wall and begin to understand what it’s all about,” he said. “Then they’ll say, ‘What’s the story here?’ That’s the hook. That’s when I say, ‘Want to try it?”
Today, Harmeling, a team leader, owns the school record that Martin, a 2004 MHSAA champion, had previously set at 11 feet.
“I thought that record would stand for a while, and it did,” Bryant said. “But as soon as I saw Anna as a freshman I remember telling her parents when they were trying to understand what pole vaulting was about that if Anna doesn’t challenge for a state title, there’s something wrong with my program. That’s the kind of kid she is. If you want to know how good your program is, you put Anna through it, and you’ll find out because this kid does everything you ask.”
And more.
Harmeling is also the lead runner on the 400 relay, and Tuesday in the Boyne City Invitational she tried the long jump for the first time after the pole vault was cancelled due to strong winds.
“She has never long jumped and had not practiced it,” Place said. “She used her pole vault approach … and won the event with a jump of 15-6, which makes her one of Boyne City’s top four jumpers ever. A 15-9 is the MHSAA state qualifying mark in Division 3, so after some practice we may have her jump again.”
Off the track, Harmeling, who carries a 4.048 grade points average, excels in other curriculars, too. She was the technical director for the Rambler Sports Network, which broadcasts football, basketball and volleyball games online. She was a section leader for the Rambler Rowdies, one of three finalists for the MHSAA Battle of the Fans VII championship. She was a state champion in a DECA business competition that qualified her for the international career development conference. And she plays stand-up bass in the family band that performs around the area.
“That’s kind of who she is,” Andrea said. “She’s not afraid to try new things – and when she does she goes all out. It’s been fun to watch. We would not have predicted any of these things for her when she started high school. She starts them, loves them and she’s good at them.”
That’s what happened when she needed to pick up some arts credits and came across a TV production class.
Bryant is a broadcaster during basketball season and works closely with Harmeling.
“She sits in the truck with all the TVs and camera angles (usually four cameras) coming into that feed, and she is the one picking out the camera shot, talking in my ear when to go to replay, when to go to commercial. She’s coaching me.
“I told her teacher, if you take her, she’ll be running this thing in a year. And she was.”
“I loved it,” Harmeling said. “I’m still part of the program now. I’m helping edit a final senior year video. It’s such an interesting platform to be part of because it’s so high-paced. I got to work with great people. It’s so interesting to learn the people side – figure out what the viewer wants to see, how things should be visually organized – and the technical side of programming. It’s like a puzzle.’
As for the family band, Mike is a banjo player in the Horton Creek Bluegrass Band. He also plays in the family band with Anna (stand-up bass), Katie (fiddle), Megan (guitar) and Ben (guitar).
Katie, a junior, and Megan, a freshman, play on the Ramblers soccer team. Ben, a seventh-grader, also plays soccer.
Anna, after posting a 1550 out of 1600 on the SAT, is off to Stanford in the fall. She also was accepted at Harvard. The Harmelings visited Stanford in February.
“I loved the people, the campus, the academics,” Anna said. “It was amazing. It became my dream school.”
Plus, it had something Harvard couldn’t offer in the winter – warm weather.
Harmeling has touched base with the Stanford track coaches about the possibility of walking on. That didn’t seem too promising until she cleared 12 feet last week.
“They told her to keep them posted so when she popped 12 one of the first things she said is, ‘I’ve got to send the Stanford coach an e-mail,’” Bryant said. “I don’t know if there’s a coach in the country that wouldn’t take a 12-foot walk-on.”
If it happens, it would be awesome, Harmeling said. If not, academics will keep her busy and she’s interested in contacting the school’s broadcasting program, too.
“I would love to work in sports broadcasting,” she said.
She’s also interested in international business.
There’s so much in the air right now, including how high she can go in the pole vault.
“Fingers crossed at this point,” she said. “I’m just trying to have fun and see how high I can go and not put any number in my head I have to reach.”
Dennis Chase worked 32 years as a sportswriter at the Traverse City Record-Eagle, including as sports editor from 2000-14. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Manistee, Wexford, Missaukee, Roscommon, Ogemaw, Iosco, Alcona, Oscoda, Crawford, Kalkaska, Grand Traverse, Benzie, Leelanau, Antrim, Otsego, Montmorency, Alpena, Presque Isle, Cheboygan, Charlevoix and Emmet counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Boyne City’s Anna Harmeling prepares to begin her pole vault approach. (Middle) Harmeling clears the bar during a meet. (Below) Harmeling points to her spot on coach Andy Bryant’s board of honored pole vaulters. (Photos courtesy of Anna Harmeling.)
VIDEO: Boyne City’s Anna Harmeling clears 12 feet for the first time during a meet April 26 at Harbor Springs. (Video courtesy of Anna Harmeling.)