'Next man up' attitude nets Germantown girls track team NSC relays title
Many obstacles overcome in claiming crown
Germantown - The meet started out as a nightmare for the host Germantown girls and the North Shore Conference Relays on May 2.
Meet officials had called all the head coaches over early and explained to them that because of heavy rains the night before, the shot put pit had something akin to a 7-foot-long puddle from about 20 to 27 feet out. The puddle was also several feet wide.
Retired Germantown football coach Phil Datka was running the event and officials initially told him to go forward with the event, but it soon became clear that it was impossible to get accurate marks throwing into water ("The poor kid marking for me was drenched," Datka said.).
Officials called all the head coaches together and agreed that something had to be done, so Athletic Director Jack Klebesadel brought in several bags of diamond dry used for baseball games and filled in the area as best it could be, as Datka had the athletes restart the competition with new throws.
"Of all the things that were on my checklist to do, that was not one I thought of," said an incredulous Warhawks girls coach Greg Siegert about checking the shot put area.
But that's when the nightmare started turning into a very pleasant dream for the Warhawks.
Injuries piling up
For despite the litany of injuries that have crossed the Germantown team's path this season (they could fill an average size team roster), the Warhawks used one first and a whole lot of depth to pull out the title in the annual event.No Leah Wheaton (knee), no problem; no Bethany Laubenheimer (labrum issue), no big deal; and top hurdler/sprinter Sammie Gassner, being limited in her choice of events due to a stress fracture, hey, it's OK.
That's because the Warhawks have adopted a true team identity, according to Siegert.
"It shows that everything I know about this team to be true," he said. "That we're a team built on numbers, on an assembly line. Our training is built on training multiple athletes to be ready for multiple events."
To prove his point, Siegert was talking to one of his junior varsity coaches. His team was scheduled to take part in a large meet May 3 (which was eventually canceled due to bad weather). Siegert was telling that coach that he would be a bit short-handed for his event, because Siegert had plucked about seven athletes off junior varsity squad to play roles in the depth-intensive varsity relays meet.
"We lived and died with those kids tonight," Siegert said.
Germantown scored 74 points for its title as Whitefish Bay was second with 68 and Cedarburg third with 65.
Team results come late
The only victory came from the discus crew of Melissa Asmondy (top individual throw of 109-0), Katelyn Turner and Rachel Claussen.Behind that, the Warhawks had six second-place finishes including the sprint medley relay team of Sydney Langmann, Caitlin Dillon, Jayne Bertieri and Gassner (1:55.67); the 300 high hurdle shuttle of Taylor Edmonds, Jackie Lemerond and Jennifer Ellis (54.42); the 900 low hurdle relay of Edmonds, Lemerond and Ellis (who had the best individual time of 47.14); the 3,200 relay team of Andrea Brown, April Okruszynski, Alyse Barrelmann and Dillon (10:20.12); the 1,600 relay of Bertieri, Gassner, Ellis and Beth Kuske (4:15.45); and the shot put trio of Asmondy, Turner and Becky Breunig.
Dillon had a tremendous 800 split on her anchor leg of the 3,200 (2:21) to get the Warhawks second and Asmondy had the second best individual shot put toss of 33-7 1/2 .
"We're just taking it all in stride, moving on to the next race," said Ellis, echoing her coach's team-first attitude.
Earning thirds for Germantown were the 400 relay team of Gassner, Liz Gilbert, Bertieri and Langmann (52.03); and the high jump team of Kuske, Dillon and Edmonds.
Another glitch developed late in the day, when it was discovered that PT Timing, which was timing and scoring the meet, was scoring all events to eight places, when in a relay meet, it should be only to six places. Fortunately, it turned out that Germantown would have come out ahead in either situation.
However, almost everyone on the team had gone home by the time the final scores were called out, so Siegert had a fun task to do at a short team meeting held the day after the meet.
"We had a chance to distribute the awards, because a lot of the kids weren't even aware that we had won," he said. "So many of them have big AP (advanced placement) tests coming up and were working so hard on them, that we just made sure that they got home at a decent hour (so they could study).
"We just didn't want to keep them around that long, but in the end, we were able to tell them about the nice little reward (the championship) that they had earned."
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