Sports Around the Lake Column

I’ve been writing this column, all the sports news and laying out the sports section for almost five months now. And now I’m finally going to let all you loyal readers know a little bit about myself.
I grew up in the mid Hudson Valley, Wappingers Falls, N.Y. to be exact. In junior high and high school I ran track. I was good, not great, but at least better then average. I did long and high jump and the hurdles, and I even won a few medals during my career.
Now I tell you this because I have not run regularly since my senior year when I injured my knee in a freak floor-hockey accident. So when I saw the Tioga Fitness Challenge was holding a 100-meter dash contest I decided to see just how far I’d fallen out of shape in the last five years.
Fully expecting to come in last behind a guy who still does college intramural sports regularly and a guy with track spikes and gear I stepped up to the line to get ready to race.
As it turned out I ran one of my best times in 100, a 13.56, barely falling to the intramural college guy, Coulter Heavenrich of Candor, and putting a little distance between myself and the third-place, spike-wearing Justin Nugent of Candor.
I felt pretty good. The results of the challenge let me know I could work a little harder, but I left there thinking I had run the third fastest time on the day without really running in five years. To my knowledge only Heavenrich and Chris Winch, a runner from Spencer High School who had the fastest time all day, had beaten me, and on top of that our fun relay team lost by only a few strides, so I felt really good about my performance on Saturday.
Well, Monday I did not feel so good. It is amazing how 28 seconds of intense running and mess with an untrained body. I had sort of a limp as I dealt with the dull pain of muscles rebuilding themselves after the event.
But that wasn’t the only thing that reinforced the Tioga Fitness Challenge’s mission to keep us fit by showing our limits through competition. When I went to pick up the results of the event to write up my news article I found out that I wasn’t the third fastest on the day, I was lucky to be in the top ten.
All three top finishers in the 30-39 year old division finished in the 12-second range blowing us college age kids out of the water. First-place finisher Grant Vennel of Spencer beat me by well over a second and Peter Johanns of Van Etten at third place beat me by a little under a second.
All of a sudden I realized I wasn’t as in as good shape as I’d hoped, and that’s exactly what the Tioga Fitness challenge was all about, challenging your fitness levels and helping you get better.
But enough about me, a few of our readers have caught the boxes on the sports pages asking for information and they were nice enough to catch us up on some of the seniors moving on to college and some who just finished up their seasons at college.
Some soon to be graduates from Newfield High School have been accepted into colleges and the sports teams that go along with them. Michele Volpini will be attending SUNY Cortland in the fall and plans to play basketball for the women’s team there. Mike Armstrong will be attending Buffalo State and play in their football program.
Zak Stamp will join the baseball team while attending Keuka College and Ian Valentine will be going to Southern Vermont to play baseball.
A few more Newfield seniors hope to make sports teams when they get to their college of choice. Janelle Shipos will attend TC3 and hopes to make the basketball or softball teams. Nick Hayes will also attend TC3 in the fall and will try out for baseball. Jevon Pakkala will attend Cazenovia and hopes to walk on to the baseball or basketball team.
Eric Kohler of Trumansburg, now attending TC3, played as part of the Panther fourth place team in the NJCAA National Championships.
Kohler finished 18th overall in a field of 83 golfers from junior colleges all over the country.
Kohler also won the longest drive contest at the event with a distance of 331 yards.