Westfield Boys Track 2004 Blue Devil Relays

At Saturday’s Blue Devil Relays at Kehler Field in Westfield Blue Devil track coach Jack Martin seemed to be everywhere at once. In a fifteen minute span he could be seen directing relay runners into the proper order for their next handoff, making sure athletes signed in to their event and attending to countless other details that would belie his other
responsibility as director of the event which went off flawlessly for the 16th time.

Unlike almost every other year, his team did not garner any first place finishes in the thirteen track and field events and the team will also not be sending any athletes to Philadelphia for this weekend’s Penn Relays, but Martin is pleased with his teams’ progress just the same.

“This is a young team with a lot of potential ,” said Martin, who has coached track for 30 years and been the head coach at Westfield since 1994. “There were a lot of top teams here. It was a very good test for us.”

The best performance Saturday came in the distance medley, where the foursome of
sophomore Kris Kagan (3:25.9), Brendan Egan (51.5), junior Rob Broadbent (2:05.3) and sophomore Jeff Perrrella (4:29.2) finished four seconds behind state ranked power Old Bridge.

“I was hoping we would win because it was named in honor of Irwin Bernstein-it was run in his honor for the first time ,” said Martin. (Bernstein of Westfield, who died in 2003. was a great runner in the 400 and 800s who competed past the age of 70

Martin considers the middle distance runners the strength of the team. Egan, a two time all Union County soccer player, has a tremendous combination of speed and strength which serves him well in the 400 and 800. Broadbent and Kagan are coming off fine indoor seasons in the 800 and Perrella excels at both the 1600 and 3200 with another sophomore, Jay Hoban adding depth.

Scott Steinberg joined Kagan,Egan and Perrella on the fourth place 4 by 800 team that ran 8:28. In addition to Egan the 400 also features junior Jake Brandman and Jeff Whitney.

The other top performance Saturday was the Pole Vault relay which finished second..
Juniors Mike Gorski and Mike Woods tied the old meet record of 25 ‘6 but were well behind Hunterdon Central, which smashed the record with a prodigious 28 foot performance. Sean Callahan and sophomore Alex Kao give the Blue Devils four impressive pole vaulters.

“Our pole vaulters are our strongest field event and should score in most major
championships this spring. Our triple jumpers are inexperienced but I think we
will surprise later ,” said Martin. Kao, sprinter Roche Landolf and Tyler McCubbin
are the leading triple jumpers. McCubbin is the leading high jumper and Landolf the top long jumper.


Javelin thrower Jeff Pazdro,a junior is the clear leader in the weight events “ He is improving every meet ,” said Martin. Junior Tom White leads the shot put and discus.
The top hurdlers are Josh Dennerlein, McCubbin and Sean Perlman

With underclassmen leading most events there is cause for optimism.
“We need to get experience as the vast majority of our runners are freshmen and
sophomores,” said Martin.

Considerable experience was gained last weekend as the Blue Devils entered a staggering 47 teams in the 13 events. Martin had all the times neatly catalogued in a Word document which probably came off his ubiquitous clipboard.
“It is great to have over 100 kids on the team ,” said Martin.

Westfield Girls Track midseason 2004

It is hard to discuss the Westfield Girls Track team without mentioning junior Emily McNeill and the powerful Blue Devil middle distance runners. And despite another dominating performance at the annual Blue Devil Relays Saturday, veteran coach Nancy Carpenter states there is much more to this team.

“This is the most balanced team we’ve ever had here ,” Carpenter said, as her distances coach Jennifer Buccino nodded in agreement. Carpenter has been head coach since 1991 and Buccino since 1989, so their sentiments cover a lot of territory.

Starting with 23 girls in her first year, the squad now numbers an impressive 103 and it would had had more, but for the first time Carpenter instituted a list of minimum performances for each event which eliminated nine more girls from the team.

“We’re not trying to discourage people, but we do have minimum standards that everyone should meet ,” said Carpenter.

The current focus is the Penn Relays, which began yesterday in Philadelphia. Three Westfield relay teams, are competing with the 4 by 800 team, led by McNeill, given the best chance of being one of 12 schools to reach the Championship of America finals. The qualifying heats were conducted yesterday with the championship scheduled f.or today.

“Our goal is to make the finals ,” said sophomore Meg Driscoll. “We were disappointed with the way we ran last year.”

Senior Deenie Quinn thinks the team will have to run under 9:25 to achieve their goal.
“We can do that. Everybody is capable of dropping their times by a few seconds ,” said Quinn.

Driscoll, Quinn and junior Ann Onishi all ran well at the Blue Devil Relays but
the team needed a 2:15 anchor leg from McNeill to make up a 10 yard deficit and beat a very strong Voorhees team in a season best time of 9:32.8 McNeill, was pleased with the win but . Buccino cautioned “It’s a good start but we still have some work to do.”

While the 4 by 800 was their only victory, the girls showed good balance by placing in the 4 by 100, the 4 by 200 and the sprint medley on the track as well as the shot put, discus and javelin relays.

Carpenter thinks the team is ideally set up to do very well in the conferences and countys where they are perennial contenders. "The sections and states present a bigger challenge," said Carpenter.

Also competing in the Penn Relays will be the 4 by 100 relay team of Mika Cruz, Jennell Carter, Alison Fleder and Ja'net Tiller.. With Cruz unavailable for the Blue Devil Relays Jessica Stroemer ably filled in as the team finished fifth in 52.6 .The same quartet also finished fifth in the 4 by 200 in 1:51.2.

Cruz and Carter will be joined by Miriam Becker-Cohen and Joann Mathew in the 4 by 400. Tiller, Carter and Matthew teamed with Becker-Cohen to finish fourth in the sprint medley. Becker-Cohen, a sophomore is a talented 800 runner, who has filled in on the 4 by 800 team in several meets.

Westfield had no shortage of fine field event performances. Saturday,. Alison Petrow and Caroline Sheridan established a school record in the shot put relay for the second time this season with a 65' 7" combined toss. Petrow teamed with Christina Henry to place 5th in the discus relay. And Sheridan teamed with Robyn Streit to place 5th in the javelin.

The dominant teams were Hunterdon Central with four firsts and Elizabeth with three.
“This meet was a good experience for us ,” said Carpenter. “There were some very good teams here.”

Westfield Tennis Midseason 2004

By almost any measurement this has been a most unusual season for the Westfield Tennis team. After eleven matches the Blue Devils find themselves with a most uncharacteristic
record of 5-6. In his fourteen previous seasons as coach ,George Kapner,had lost only 67 matches an average of less than five per season.

To try and turn things around, Kapner decided to reopen challenge matches which resulted in several lineup changes. Alec Jaslow supplanted Rich Moran as first singles with Moran moving to 2nd singles. Lee Bernstein remained at 3rd singles. Alec Wasserman and Brian Kender are now at1st doubles with Adam Gerckens and Andrew Levy are at 2nd doubles.

So far the results have not changed. The Blue Devils were shut out last Thursday by one of the top teams in the state, East Brunswick. Although they lost three time county champions David Eisenberg to graduation, Westfield had reason for optimism with
five returning lettermen from a 19-5 team that won a sectional championship and finished second in the Union County Tournament and the Group IV finals.

Going into the season Kapner had said "Our goal is to win back the county championship from Summit and return to the state finals and win them .”

Westfield had a big match with sectional rival Bridgewater-Raritan, Wednesday.
. "Last year, we beat them in the regular season, but winning the Group IV state championship means going through Bridgewater," Kapner said. "They are our biggest road block."

In recent years the Union County tournament has usually evolved into almost a f\dual meet between Westfield and Summit and Kapner thinks it will come down to the two schools again. “Summit is not as dominant as they have been, but they have already
beaten us in a dual match, 3-2. ,” said Kapner.