HNT Girls Track: East Brunswick hopes to make a run
Sprinting star Shanelle Colmon is used to blazing down the track in seconds. But in practice, she’ll run two or so miles as part of the training to build strength. She has a question for the 1600 and 3200 runners.
“I always ask them, like how do you guys do it?,” she said with a laugh. “Because I wouldn’t be motivated to run three miles at a meet or practice. (It’s) not boring, I just feel like I’m not a distance person.”
Fortunately for East Brunswick, the junior does just fine in sprints. She’s the defending Greater Middlesex Conference 100-meter champion and placed second in the 200. At the Meet of Champions last spring, Colmon placed fourth in the 200.
And luckily for Colmon, other East Brunswick runners can go long, or over hurdles, or succeed in the field pits. All in all, the Bears enter the season with a deep team that hopes to push South Brunswick.
That’s the main team storyline as meets get underway on April 1: Can South Brunswick be stopped? The Vikings have won 11 straight GMC championships and 11 consecutive GMC Relay titles. Once again, they’ll be strong led by Courteney Campbell, the Meet of Champions high jump winner and Rutgers commit. Other top stars from the always-deep team include indoor GMC indoor champs Essence Baker (800 meters), Nicole Notarianni (55 meter hurdles), Sabrina Ray (pole vault) and Miranda Irizarry (shot put).
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“Look, South Brunswick is, in my opinion, the best program in the state year in and year out, especially from a depth perspective,” East Brunswick coach Jeff Sundberg said. “They are so balanced across the board. So they always are giving us something to shoot for. And we’re going to do the best that we can, but they’re really good again as you could see in the winter. The results speak to the program, their coaching, and they had a tremendously successful winter track season. We have a big gap to bridge. It’s going to be tough, but we certainly are shooting for our top goals.”
East Brunswick hopes to be right there with the Vikings in the championship meets. The Bears have been runners-up two straight seasons in the GMCs and return their own stars. They include junior Chelsea Stocki, who won the indoor GMC 3200 title. Senior high jumper Leyna Abrahams and 400 hurdler Mariah Shummette both competed at the outdoor MOC and hold the school records in their events. Additionally, Shummette met the time standard for the Penn Relays and hopes to compete in the famed event his spring.
Gabrielle Blaustein, part of the 4x100 relay team that placed seventh at the Meet of Champions last spring along with Colmon, is back. As is pole vaulter Taylor Nevin (5th in GMC). Colmon said the team has a good chemistry, which helps push everyone in practice.
“It’s really fun running with all of them,” Shummette said. “Especially during invitationals, we know who’s running what. So we’re always making sure we’re out there cheering them on. … We have a decent amount of girls doing each event. We’re a pretty balanced team. We have depth. There’s not one event that’s missing girls.”
Colmon, meanwhile, enters the spring after having competed in indoor track for the first time. In the past, she played basketball.
“I started to miss it at the beginning of the season when I saw all my friends going to basketball practice, but once I was on the track I forgot about it,” said Colmon, who also plays the flute. “I wanted to focus more on my strength coming into the spring season because that was one of my major setbacks last season, not being strong enough.”
In the winter GMC championships, Colmon placed third in the 55-meter dash after running it for the first time and took second in the 400. This spring, she’ll return to the 100 and 200, her specialties.
“I think it’s something that gives her more experience and we’ll see how her spring turns out,” Sundberg said. “But I’m very confident in her. I know she’s confident and looking forward to the spring season and I think you’re going to see some great things out of her.”
The same could be said for the whole team.
“We’re going to be able to score quite a few points as long as we stay healthy and we continue to improve,” said Sundberg in the chase to top South Brunswick. “It’s very tough, but I think the competition brings the best out of our girls and it pushes us to be the best we can be. I think that having such a good team in our conference is a good thing for us.”