The West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North track and field team’s star runners — seniors Joe Mastrangelo, Mike Page, and Roland Bisio — are expected to make the team a contender in the first round of the state championships, starting this Friday, May 27, at Monmouth.##M:[more]##
But when asked to talk about the athlete that best exemplifies the character of his team, head coach Mike Jackson singles out senior Albert McCullan, who has spent all season attempting a comeback from knee surgery.
“Albert could have been a state champion in multiple events,” says Jackson. “But then he blew out his knee” during the fall football season, tearing his ACL and MCL.
In his junior year, McCullan was the top point earner for the Knights, and winning four medals in the Mercer County championships, helping to lead the team to a program-best second-place finish in the process.
Slowly recovering from the injury, McCullan has had to settle for personal victories, reaching for improvements in his speed on a race-by-race basis.
Now, at the end of the season, he is finally starting to see a glimmer of his old self. In the 400 meters, McCullan has managed to shave his time from the beginning of the season by more than three seconds, going from 56 seconds to 52.4.
Jackson says that McCullan serves as an example to a team that has a lot of underclassmen who have much potential but are still lacking in consistency. “Albert has had the courage to go out there and fail over, and over, and over again, and now he’s worked himself back to the point where I believe he will score in the sectionals” says Jackson. “That’s the kind of courage these young kids will remember. They’ve learned that it’s okay to fail, but it’s not okay to not try.”
McCullan hopes to compete at the college level at Saint Joseph’s, where he has earned a partial athletic scholarship.
Meanwhile, Coach Jackson says that he thinks his team has a chance for success in the sectionals. Although this year’s team doesn’t have the overall level of talent as previous years, the trio of Mastrangelo, Page, and Bisio might be enough to lead the team to a sectional title.
All three runners performed well in the Mercer County Championships on May 14, and took four gold medals. The Knights finished in fifth place in the meet behind Notre Dame, Trenton, Hopewell valley, and Hamilton despite the fact that they didn’t run in the 4×400. High School South finished in eighth place.
Mastrangelo won two gold medals — in the 200 meters in 21.9 seconds, and in the 400 in 49.5 seconds. He also finished fourth in the 100 meters and accounted for 24 of the Knights 45 points.
Mastrangelo “competes just as hard in the classroom as he does on the field,” says Jackson, pointing out that he will attend Brown University next year.
The coach believes Mastrangelo’s speed could even take him to the NFL as a punt or kick returner. “He reminds me a lot of Tim Dwight from Iowa,” says Jackson. Dwight is a wide receiver/punt and kick returner who has played for the Atlanta Falcons, San Diego Chargers, and now the New England Patriots. “Joey can have a great track and field career, but if he continues as a speedster, I could see him in the NFL.”
Also competing well in the county championships were Bisio and Page. Bisio won gold in the 3,”200 meters with a time of 9:50 that equaled his school record. He also finished sixth in the 800 meters after being pushed off the track during the event. Page took the gold in the mile race, finishing with a time of 4:30.9, and beating his previous personal best by some 6 seconds.
Jackson, 34, whose parents were also both teachers and runners, was a speedster himself. He played football, baseball, and was on the track team in high school, and competed in football and track at San Diego State. After his first year, he transferred to Rider University — which had courted him in high school — after San Diego dropped its track program.
Jackson, who says he occasionally takes some ribbing from the kids on the team about having the same name as the beleaguered pop star, has been the head coach of the Knights’ track and field program since its inception five years ago.
A teacher with the school district for 11 years, Jackson, who lives in East Brunswick, teaches social studies at Community Middle School. He has also taught at Dutch Neck School and the Millstone River Upper Elementary School.
In addition to his work as a teacher and coach, Jackson plays Ultimate Frisbee, a non-contact team sport that mixes features from soccer, basketball, football, and netball. Jackson even uses the frisbee during Knights’ track and field practice as part of the team’s fitness training.
The coach says he has seen a rising level of competitiveness in the sport. “This county as a whole is getting stronger. There’s a level of interest in the sport now that I didn’t see when I first started coaching.”
Jackson attributes the influx of athletes to last year’s summer Olympic Games. “Every time there’s an Olympics we see a big increase in interest in track and field. It makes a situation where the borderline kids are likely to choose track and field over baseball or some of the other sports.”
The coach says the parity between teams helps the Knights. “This is the first step to the state championship,” he told his team of the sectionals before practice on May 19. “Our section this year is going to be a dog fight. That helps us. We’re a team that hasn’t been as deep as in the past but has a few elite runners. For us, that’s good.”
“We shocked a lot of people when we came in second in the county last year,” he continued. “Then we shocked the whole state when we almost beat Willingboro.”
The loss to state track and field powerhouse Willingboro last May was a bitter pill that was forced down the team’s throat through a bad call by a state athletic official.
After the 4 by 400 relay, which the Knights won, the Willingboro anchor was disqualified for throwing his baton in frustration after the race. The loss of points for Willingboro gave the Knights enough to win the event, but an official broke the rules and reversed the call after the Willingboro coach complained.
The NJSIAA later ruled that the reversal should not have been allowed, but Willingboro’s victory was allowed to stand, says Jackson, because a decision made on the field by an official is not appealable.
Jackson believes the lingering pain from that loss will drive his team this year. “We’re coming out with a chip on our shoulder. We beat Willingboro every way we could have and it came down to an official’s call. The NJSIAA even apologized to us afterwards.”
“There are going to be a lot of teams butting heads in the middle,” says Jackson. “I believe that our guys can come out on top.”
For South, Good Golfers Come in Small Packages
After losing his top seniors from his 2004 team that went 12-4, Wray could be forgiven if he wrote off the 2005 season as a rebuilding year even before the season began.
South’s golf program has been one of the best in the area for 15 years, but this season the Pirates started the season out with three straight losses: Princeton, Steinert, and Hopewell Valley. Still, no one was pushing any panic buttons. Entering the season with some impressive veterans, including senior Christa Volker — the area’s only female player on an otherwise all-male team — lightning struck for the Pirates in the person of freshman Anthony Aloi.
Aloi was already well known even before he got to the high school level, having been one of the area’s best golfers for the past three years at the middle school level. Aloi lived up to his reputation. In his first year he has become the top golfer on the Pirates and is rated as the area’s third best golfer, with a 12 wins and a 37.9 nine-hole average. On April 20, in the Pirates win over Notre Dame, he hit a hole-in-one to propel the Pirates to a 29 stroke advantage.
He also knows how to shine under the spotlight, turning one of his best performances in the Mercer County Tournament on May 11 at Mercer Oaks Country Club, shooting a three-over-par, 75 at Mercer Oaks. On May 16 he fired a 79, 7-over par, on the 6,”390-yard Buena Vista Country Club to finish fifth in the Sectionals and qualify for the State Tournament of Champions.
While he fell to an 80 on May 23 and took eighth in the Group IV category, the diminutive Aloi still made a big impression on his coach. “He’s the first of our kids to make this tournament since Matt Davidson did it in 1996,” says Wray, referring to the WW-P alumnus who is now breaking into the PGA tour. (Davidson just advanced to a sectional qualifier on Monday, June 6, for a possible berth in the U.S. Open tournament.) Of course, as Wray points out, there is one difference between Davidson’s accomplishments and Aloi’s — Davidson was a senior when he made the tournament.
In addition to Aloi, the Pirates have won with consistent golf from juniors Mike March (40.3 average), Ryan Phelan (44.2), sophomore Dan Kim (41.8), and Volker.
A resident of West Windsor, Volker lived with her family in California for the first 12 years of her life. She closed out her WW-P career by advancing to the girls Tournament of Champions on May 25. She shot a 98 to finish in 22nd place.
North Golf
Having graduated six of the top seven golfers from last year’s team, North golf coach Bill Harman knew the season would likely be a rebuilding year. With an 8-6 overall record, the Knights have proved to be a bit more than that.
This year’s team features senior Sean Willard, averaging 40.3 per nine holes, two juniors (Bill Carson and Dustin Ward) and eight sophomores — including sophomores Mike Carpio and Jason Berg — the Knights have tons of potential. But inexperience manifests itself as inconsistency, shooting a 198 one day and a 229 the next.
Through it all, the Knights have continued to improve, including an impressive sixth place finish in the Mercer County Tournament on May 11. Harman hopes that trend continues for a team that is short on experience and long on youth.
South Tennis Champs
For the High School South boys tennis team, 2005 is the best of times — at least in the last six years. The Pirates clinched their first sectional title since 1999 when they narrowly defeated an old nemesis, East Brunswick, 3-2, on May 24.
South was able to win despite the fact that its first and second singles players both lost their matches and both doubles pairings had seen little time on the court together. Despite a hard fought battle, Shintaro Mori lost, 6-3, 6-7 (8-10), 6-1, and Leland Richardson dropped his first match all season in straight sets, 7-5, 6-0. But Russell Nitzberg won in three, 6-2, 4-6, 6-0, to gain a point for the Pirates.
Doubles player Greg Kelley had played much of the season with Ben Cornfeld, but two weeks ago Pirates’ coach Jim Giovacchini started matching Kelley with Dennis Tuan. The new first doubles team won, 7-5, 6-2. At second doubles, Giovacchini paired Cornfeld with Steve Fernandez. The duo had played only once together all season, but managed to win convincingly, 6-2, 6-4.
The Pirates were scheduled to begin the state tournament on Thursday, May 26, against Bridgewater-Raritan (after the WW-P News went to press) in the semifinal round. With a win, South would play again Saturday, May 28, at 3 p.m. for the state title.
People in Sports
Amy Hashem and Jono Chirumbolo, of High School North, and Keeley Farren and Eric Maniere, of High School South, are winners of the Colonial Valley Conference Sportmanship Award.
Laura Trzasko, a 2003 graduate of High School North, led the University of Connecticut women’s lacrosse team to a 12-5 record, the ECAC Division I championship. She was second on the team in minutes played (960), scored nine goals, one assist, 19 ground balls and caused 26 turnovers.
Alex Levy, a West Windsor resident, is the second singles player for Franklin & Marshall College men’s tennis team. A junior, he was a former state prep champion at Lawrenceville. He has compiled a 9-6 record this season.
Jess Burger, a 2004 graduate of High School North, hit .310, scored 17 runs, and stole five bases for the Dickinson College softball team.
She was named to the All-Centennial Conference second team all-star squad this season.
