Badin vs. Fredericktown
Miamisburg graduation 2012
Valley View vs. Greenville
Home > Blogs > Springfield, Ohio High School Sports > Archives > 2010 > May > 07
Friday, May 7, 2010
Irish to host Marion Local in 2010
It’s never too early to start thinking about the upcoming prep football season.
At OHSAA.org, the 2010 varsity football schedules have been released.
One game, in particular, sticks out.
On Sept, 3, state powerhouse Marion Local travels to Catholic Central for their first regular season game in Week 2.
The teams last met in 2006 in the Division VI regional semifinals with the Irish falling 49-20.
The same week, Springfield High hosts D-I state power Upper Arlington. They’ll travel to Sycamore in Week 3.
Also in Week 3, Northeastern will host Blanchester, coached by former Shawnee High School coach Jack O’Rourke. Northeastern coach Scott Rolf faced the Wildcats for years at Clinton-Massie.
Mechanicsburg dropped longtime Week 2 foe Frankfort Adena and replaced them with Dayton Northridge.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Catholic Central High School, High School Football, Mechanicsburg High School, Northeastern High School, Springfield High School
Crazy passion: There’s more to pole vaulting than meets the eye
The Wooster Daily Record takes a look at pole vaulting:
It is one of the most entertaining events to watch in track and field, one of the most difficult to perfect and near impossible to explain. The pole vault has appealed to area athletes who are brave enough to conquer the daunting task of flying over a raised bar with the aid of a fiberglass pole. In competition, the vaulters are given three chances to clear a specific height. The bar is raised gradually until there is a winner.
“You have to be crazy to run down a runway with a stick in your hands, put that stick in a hole, fly over a bar and land on a pad,” said Orrville senior Eric Bowers.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: For your reading enjoyment..., High school track
On this date in area sports history …
On this date in local sports history, 17 years ago, the News-Sun published a story about two Shawnee track athletes, identical twins Joe and Jon McGinnis.
Published: 05/07/1993
BRAVE TWINS NOT POLES APART
By Cindy Horner - Sports Writer
Joe-Jon’s the name and pole vaulting’s their game.
Joe and Jon McGinnis, sophomores on Shawnee’s track team, look alike, sound alike and even do things alike.
In fact, they’re so much alike you can’t tell them apart, because they’re identical twins.
“Joe-Jon is the name,” said Shawnee track coach Tim Mattern. “I can’t tell them apart. I just yell out Joe-Jon and they’ll tell me which is which. If they were standing in front of me right now, I couldn’t tell them apart, but I’m getting better at it.”
“The whole football team called us Joe-Jon,” said Joe, who is six minutes older than his twin. “Joe-Jon doesn’t bother us. Our father calls us `Twin.’ We’re announced by our first names at meets. They used to mark the wrong jumps for the wrong person. Our close friends can tell us apart because of our personalities.”
Mattern does have one way of telling Joe-Jon apart. Jon runs hurdles. He’s in the 110 and 300 hurdles and runs on the 400 relay with Joe, who also runs the open 400 and the 800 relay.
The brothers also competed in wrestling and football, but pole vaulting is the family sport.
Joe and Jon’s older brother, Steve, who graduated from Shawnee in 1988, finished second in the state with a vault of 14 feet as a senior.
Joe and Jon, on the edge of 17, are already close to Steve’s vault at 12-6 and 13-0, respectively. Mattern thinks both will add another foot before the track season ends.
“They’ve got good technique and good skills,” said Mattern, who also pole vaulted. “They’re coachable and they don’t have any fear, giving them that edge that’s needed to be competitive. You have to have a decent athlete to do it correctly and to know the technique. These guys - their technique is excellent.”
The twins were using a 12-foot pole before switching to a 14-footer, which increased their vaults because it bends more.
“At the beginning of the season, we only got 12-0 on the old pole,” Jon said. “Then coach bought us a new pole and right away I made 12-6. Then, I got a 13-0 at the Urbana Invitational, so now I want it again and hopefully I’ll do better for the CBC (meet).”
“We just went nuts when we got the new pole,” Joe said. “The track team thought we lost it. We showed how big a difference it made in the next meet. Now we’re hoping to get to the next (sized) pole.”
The twins practice as often as possible under the watchful eyes of their father, Tom, and Mattern.
“We’re consistently working on our form,” Joe said. “We even climb cliffs, jump off them and go rappelling.”
“I was vaulting at 12-6, I landed in a plant box and hurt my ankle, but you’ve got to be able to take it and go on,” Joe continued. “You have to be mentally tough. You can’t break.”
Like most twins, the two are close and almost inseparable, but that doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy competing against each other.
“When it comes to pole vaulting it’s above all to beat my brother in the next meet,” Joe said. “We push each other to the max. The competition is good for us. It helps us out during the meets. In anything we do everyone always wants Jon and I on the same team because we work so well together. I know exactly how he thinks so we can adjust to things.”
“We both joke around a lot,” said Jon, who said they started pole vaulting in the fifth grade after Steve broke a pole and brought it home for them to play with.
“We either get first and second or second and third or something like that. We encourage each other and are always in everything together. We want to finish higher than each other or its a week of ridicule. There’s been a battle between us all our life in everything. We’re used to it now.”
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: High school track, Shawnee High School
