Track athletes training participate in decathlon

This May, eight track athletes will be participating in the high school decathlon and heptathlon competition at Mount Sac High in Walnut, a town of 30,000 just outside of Los Angeles.

The team consists of senior Olivia Whiting, juniors Lauren Casey-Clyde, Julia Sakamoto, Clarck Wang, David McLennan, Will and Sam Guy and sophomore Avery Gigoux. The Guy brothers, Wang and McLennan will be doing the decathlon (which consists of 10 events), while Whiting, Casey-Clyde, Sakamoto and Gigoux will be doing the heptathlon (which consists of seven events.)

Assistant  coach Peter Jordan said that this multi-event is possibly the hardest physical challenge high school athletes can participate in. He credits the difficulty of the competition to the quantity and variety of events.

“It is likely that the heptathlon and decathlon athletes are not great at one event, but are pretty athletic and are pretty good at a lot of events,” Jordan said.

According to Jordan, the competition takes place over two days. The boys on day one do the 400-meter run, long jump, shot put, high jump and 400-meter run. On day two, they do 110-meter high hurdles, discus throw, pole vault, 1500-meter run and javelin throw.

The girls on day one do the 100-meter run, high jump, shot put and 200-meter run. On day two they do long jump, javelin throw and 800-meter run.

Junior Clark Wang said that to prepare for the competition, Jordan has set a schedule for the decathlon and heptathlon athletes that consists of training after normal track practices and on weekends.

“Mr. Jordan is coordinating with all the coaches, and we spend time with each coach for specialized training,” Wang said. “We still do the normal track practices, but we do specialized training with each coach for each of the 10 events. We have extra weight lifting days on Saturdays as well.”

Wang said that the students will need to go off campus for the pole vault training, because Saratoga doesn’t have the facilities  needed.  He added that the pole vault is the most dangerous of the 10 events due to the injuries that could occur when athletes are so high in the air.
“Personally, I think that it’s a little scary.  It’s not just the height, if you don’t jump right, the pole can backlash and hit you really hard.” Wang said. “But I’m excited to try it out and overall it should be a good experience.”

Wang said that he was interested in participating in the decathlon because he wants to try events that aren’t usually offered in the normal track practices and meets.

“It seems like something interesting, and I figured I would give it a shot because I’ve never tried pole vault, shot put or discus,” Wang said. “It's just a giant medley, and I think I would enjoy it.”

Jordan said the competition is not a normal league dual meet. He said that he has never heard of “any school in our league who has ever done this competition.”

“For the decathlon athletes, all the high school track dual meets are going to just be practices for the decathlon,” Jordan said.  “On this team, students are going to have to do multiple events, and possibly different events every meet because the more experience these athletes get, the more prepared they will be when the time comes.”

Jordan said that he is excited these students are willing to dedicate a large chunk of their time to train for the event.  He adds that the kind of kid who volunteers to do this event is not some “run-of-the-mill athlete.”

“When you talk about a big challenge [at Saratoga,] it's maybe six AP classes, and I admire that, I'm not putting that down, but this is biggest possible physical challenge possible, and not many people would think of doing it,” Jordan said. “It's really a special group of kids, and it is really exciting for me as a coach to work with these guys.”