Husk(Y) Relays

I saw some t-shirts floating around at the Husky Relays today that said "Huskie Relays." Now I may think I'm a lot smarter than I am, and being smart enough to realize just that, I double, and triple checked..."Huskie" is not a word. Maybe it's just a personal touch Matawan likes to put on the event, but I just saw it as a careless error. Whatever, I'll probably do something similarly careless in this post, and in fact have already done so in the paper (see post #1).

Edit: Yep. Huskie is a word. It's a variant of "husky." Brilliant observation twarted again.

In my defense, Google thinks it's "Husky." And when is Google ever wrong?

What the Matawan Relays lacked in mainstream spelling and grammar, they made up for in performance. I must admit, I was a little disappointed that I was missing the Colts Neck Relays (and of couse the Mariners game) in favor of the Huskies, but the field turned out to be impressive. And thanks to MLB.tv (No. 4 on my list of Top 10 Things Cooler than Crayons) I can watch the Mariners 8-3 win over Texas in all its glory.


The most impressive athlete at Matawan was indeed Manny Mayers. He didn't perform at his highest level, but I have watched enough sports to know a true talent when I see one. Everything he did was effortless - especially the 3 x 400 hurdles when it actually looked as though he could have backpedaled to victory - and making your sport look easy is the sign of a good prospect.


It seemed like the format of the hurdle relays hurt him and his Lakewood team because instead of doing the handoffs, the participants just run the race and they combine the times of the three athletes on each team. When I talked to him, he agreed, saying it's hard to push after getting so far out ahead so early in the race. He usually has to wait for the Ocean County Meet to get his first taste of competition from multiple parties.


As it was, Lakewood finished in six place in their Group, but something tells me Manny could have improved that finish if there were some jerseys out in front to run down.


The Matawan field team is superb. Eldrick Alleyne of Monmouth got a win in the throws in his team's dual meet against Matawan, but across the board, Matawan is tougher in the throws than Monmouth and just about anyone in the Shore, save Toms River South. Matawan might have more high-caliber throwers than South, but Patrick Park, Kyle Goodman, and Brian Doran are three of the best in the state at their particular events. Still, the Matawan group, with Grasso, Trolian, MacCutcheon, and Turner, are going to be too much to handle for anyone left on their schedule, especially now that they already performed against Monmouth.


It didn't get mentioned in the paper because APP sports ignores any talk of out-of-area, non-football occurences, but Piscataway and Hunterdon Central was the best matchup of the day on the boys side. I wasn't paying as much attention to it as I would have liked with all the necessary Shore coverage I had to do, but it came down to the last relay (the 4 x 400) and Piscataway won by one hundreth of a second on, I believe, Dwayne Gratz's last leg. If you go through the results in Sunday's paper, you'll see that one of those two owned the top spot in just about every event, save five events, only one of which was a track event.


Another group that didn't make the story in the paper was Marlboro's Javelin team of Nick Spinella and Ryan Jennings, which won the Group III event with a cumulative distance of 285-7.


One other understated performace was the Holmdel distance medley, partucularly George Galasso's first leg 1200, in which he outran Doug Weeks of TR East. If you'll refer to the "Weekly Best" list, Weeks was the man in the distance events, but Galasso, who hasn't run in a dual meet yet, beat him by about two or three strides (By the way, you can tell I'm new at actually covering track by my lack of a stop watch at these meets. Hence the use of "strides" rather than seconds).


Still East's relay team won its heat and Division rather handily thanks to good runs by Neil Sheridan and T.J. Bocchino. Holmdel was not in East's actual scoring division, but Groups II and III ran together to save time, which helped the Group II times out some.


The Central Golden Eagles looks like they are back. I was talking to someone in the know who thought they weren't going to be that good this year, but they showed Saturday that they might be better across the board than initially perceived. Their jumps and hurdles are strong, which is fitting given that they are coached by Michael Jordan.


Quick notes on the Colts Neck Relays (based on word of mouth because times were not made available yet): The Cox brothers were on a recruiting trip and did not attend...According to my eyes and ears at the meet, Kris Carle ran a 4:43 mile to push Jackson to a min in the distance medely. Craig Forys ran the 1200-meter first leg of the race...Everything else is pretty much what you can already read in the box score. Hopefully I'll gain some more perspective on the times when I look at them in the next couple days. If you are dying to see them, head to www. coltsnecktrack.com. They should be up on Sunday.


Well after spending the last 16 hours fixed on track, I'm beat, and I didn't even run (although I stood and walked around a lot I guess). I even have a little sunburn to show for it, something I'll cherish over the next two days since the entire Northeast is apparently going to get the Atlantic Ocean dumped on it. And since I'm tired and sunburned, my proofreading was lax if not nonexistent. So, in the spirit of criticism, feel free to find the careless errors and throw them back in my face.