LETTING IT FLY: Princeton High senior star Sean Wilton lets the shot put fly last Sunday at the Colonial Valley Conference (CVC) Championships meet (formerly known as the Mercer County Championships). Last Sunday, Wilton set a personal record of 61’00.50 in winning the shot put. Wilton’s win helped PHS tie for second in the team standings at the meet. (Photo by Rohan Viswanathan)

By Bill Alden

While the athletes in the Princeton High track and field program train hard physically, they have been increasingly emphasizing the mental aspect of their sport.

“We have been talking a whole lot as a team and actually having sessions with a more sports psychology focus and growth mindset,” said PHS head coach Ben Samara. “It is talking about the mindset of being an athlete and all of the things that come with that. I think our athletes have really embraced that. It is how you approach a challenge, how you approach failure, and how you approach setbacks. The mental approach is really starting to pay off for us as a program as a whole.”

Utilizing some of those lessons, PHS excelled at the Colonial Valley Conference (CVC) Championships meet (formerly known as the Mercer County Championships) last Sunday at the Rothman Orthopaedics Sports Complex in Toms River as the boys’ squad tied for second in the team standings while the girls placed fifth. The Tiger boys piled up 40 points in tying Hightstown for second with Notre Dame coming in first at 67 while the PHS girls had 49 points in the meet won by WW/P-North with 78.

PHS senior Ishaq Inayat displayed his focus at the CVC meet, winning the long jump with a leap of 19’11 and taking second in the triple jump with a best mark of 39’6.

“For three seasons now, Ishaq has really been working a lot on his board placement,” said Samara. “He tends to foul a lot because he has got really great strides but sometimes they are a little bit inconsistent. He is really getting so much better at hitting the board and being consistent. It really was his consistency that paid off in the long jump. He was the most consistent jumper for the meet. He was second in the triple jump. That is an event that he is not able to do as much because it is pretty hard on the legs. I think he enjoys the event from a fun perspective.”

Samara had fun watching senior star and Brown commit Sean Wilton set a personal record of 61’00.50 in winning the shot put.

“I was talking to his mom as the competition was going on and Sean is a guy who is really embracing that team philosophy,” said Samara. “He is a guy who has books on the mindset and he has become a student of that. In the beginning of his career, setbacks would really get him down. Now he has this attitude that if I hit a plateau I am going to keep pushing and I know I am going to get past it. He has just been waiting for that perfect throw and today was it, right on the very first throw.”

The quartet of Kyle Carr, Andrew Foreman, Fletcher Harrison, and Anderson Potter got it right as they took third in the 4×400-meter relay in a time of 3:36.97.

“Our 400 guys are fantastic, two of our short sprinters have recently become 400 runners and we think they are going to be really, really good,” said Samara. “The first one is Andrew, who has really developed into a leader and is a really great example of what hard work can do. In previous years, he was a 55, 200 guy. This year he started saying I want to the run the 400, I want to challenge myself. He started running the four and he is at the top of our 400 group. Kyle is one of our short sprinters who was convinced that he could only run short. He has just looked really, really good recently and we wanted to challenge him today. We said we are going to stretch you out of the 200 and put you into the 4×400 relay and we are going to get a medal with this 4×4. He went out there and had our second fastest split of the day and he said the 400 isn’t so bad. We were really happy with how our 400s competed and really went after their races.”

Samara credited the 4×400 group with setting the tone as a short-handed PHS boys’ squad over-performed at the CVC meet.

“Tying for second was a really nice surprise because we have had these injuries,” said Samara. “It was really the grit of that 4×400. They really came together, each one of them.”

As for the Tiger girls, Samara believes they are laying the groundwork for something special.

“The girls are really, really good, we want to use this year as a springboard to next year,” said Samara. “We really think that next year is when this girls team is going to really compete. They are all really, really young. We think next year they will have great opportunities. We wanted to see how close they can come this year.”

Sophomore Maddie Hamlin has been competing well in the sprints, taking fifth in the 55 meters at the CVC meet in 7.59.

“You look at somebody like Maddie Hamlin, who has been working on her start like crazy and looked like she was shot out of a cannon in the prelims,” said Samara. “She ended up finishing 5th in the 55 against some really top runners and PRing by over a 10th of a second. It was a big PR for her.”

Another sophomore, Ngozi Okeke-Agulu, produced a top performance in the long jump, placing second with a best leap of 15’2.

“Ngozi is great, she is just scratching the surface,” said Samara. “We are working on a lot of board placement with her and now that that is starting to come into form. We are going to start working on her landing. I think she is going to start getting out really far.”

In the 1,600, junior Kajol Karra displayed some good form, taking fourth in 5:12.57.

“Kajol is just so consistent, she really follows race plans well,” said Samara. “That whole group of distance girls feeds off of each other. They have a lot of good young athletes now. It is hard to get into that lineup, there is so much talent there.”

The squad’s talent was exemplified by a superb performance in the 800 as sophomore Lena Murray took second in 2:24.88 with senior Rachel Xin placing third in 2:28.21 and sophomore Mila Trkov finishing fourth in 2:28.37.

“The 800 was a real highlight, we have been blessed with a lot of really good coaches,” said Samara. “Trey Carnevale is our assistant coach and we actually formed a mid-distance group with the boys and girls that he runs. He has a really good relationship with all of the athletes in the distance group. They are doing targeted training. We just have a really talented group of girls that really like each other a lot so they work real hard together.”

The 800 trio along with junior Kacey Howes did really well in the 4×400 relay, placing second in 4:15.90.

“The 4×4 is something that we really took pride in, there were six or seven years there where we had nine out of 10 county titles,” said Samara. “In recent years, we have been a little down. Trey, coach [Jim] Smirk and I really wanted to build up that mid-distance group to really help complement our 4x4s and keep a pool of athletes between the sprints and distance. Now we are starting to see the dividends from that.”

In the view of Samara, the dividends gained from the emphasis on mental training were reflected by the relay quartets. “Just like the guys, every single girl on the 4×4 went after their leg and that is what we were looking for them to do,” said Samara. “They came really close to winning the title.”