As a sophomore, Hunter Guenzel and his buddy Tom Habgood decided to try throwing javelin for the Notre Dame High track & field team. Their reasons were simplistic enough—to have some fun and enjoy a friendly competition between each other.
Guenzel had no idea what heights—and distances—that would lead him to.
As a 10th-grader, he looked at the school’s javelin records, both individual and relays, and thought how nice it would be to break them.
“But then I was like ‘I just started this, how am I ever gonna get those?’” Guenzel said. “Then we kind of got good. One day our junior year I was I was looking at them, and I thought ‘If we do this and this we can end up breaking them,’ and we set that as our goal in our junior year.”
It became more than just a dream for Guenzel, who graduated from Notre Dame last month with the school’s javelin record, and was also part of the record-setting two-man and three-man relay teams. The Ewing resident also reached the Meet of Champions for the first time after taking second in the NJSIAA Non-Public A meet. Guenzel finished in 20th place in the MOC finals with a distance of 162-03.
A hockey player all his life, Guenzel became so good at javelin that he will attend Alvernia next year to participate in both sports. He was recruited for hockey but got in touch with the track coach, who has invited him to walk on.
It’s impressive to think what he has accomplished in just three years.
“It would be cool to see how I’d be if I started earlier,” Guenzel said. “There were kids at the Meet of Champs who did start younger. Even if I just started my freshmen year, I probably could have been in the 180s and medalled at the Meet of Champs.”
Coach Joe McLaughlin felt that Guenzel’s tenacity is what helped him blossom.
“He pretty much exploded this year,” McLaughlin said. “He’s an ice hockey player so he’s got that determination. Our ice hockey program is always the best in the county, so he’s a competitor. When Tom started getting better, then boom! Hunter gets mad. When Tom beats Hunter in a meet, the next meet Hunter usually beats him.”
It was a friendly competition that started within a Notre Dame classroom.
“It just kind of happened,” Guenzel said. “We both had a class together and we were talking about it and we just decided to both try it together. We kind of did it for fun to try something new. We went into it trying other things too (shot and discus), and javelin was what we became good at.”
Sophomore year was somewhat uneventful for Guenzel, whose best throw was a 141-6. He was just learning the ropes, however, and still came within five feet of advancing out of the South Jersey Non-Public A Meet into Groups. Hunter soon began taking lessons under former Olympian and former Hamilton West coach Mark Mirabelli.
As a junior, Guenzel raised his PR to 162 in a dual meet, and finished second in the Mercer County meet with a toss of 153-3. He and Habgood were also part of the three-man javelin team that set the school record with a 422 mark. He was unable to get out of South Jersey Non-Public A, but a solid foundation had been set.
Over the summer, Guenzel dropped body fat and put on 10 pounds of muscle. He also continued with yoga that he started a year earlier, which helped with his flexibility.
The results were immediately apparent as Hunter threw a career-best 171-0 in the Raider Relays at Hillsborough. Habgood added a 148, which gave the duo the school two-man record of 319 in the first meet of the season. They would go on to win the Mercer County Relays, and every other relay they were entered in.
“What was nice in that meet is, a week earlier a paper did a story on the top returning javelin throwers,” said McLaughlin, who credited new assistant E.J. Nemeth for helping improve the throwers this year. “The top guy was from Franklin, and Hunter beat him in that meet.”
Guenzel got his first individual title at the Mercer County Meet when he threw 168-11 to win the gold. Two weeks later, he set two records in one event at the East Coast Relays. Hunter combined with Habgood and Charles Hagen to throw a 486-10 and shatter the school’s three-man mark set just a year earlier. Guenzel led the way by breaking the 10-year-old school individual record with a throw of 176.
Next up were sectionals, and Guenzel finally advanced although barely, getting a sixth-place throw of 154-9 at Egg Harbor Township.
“That was the first time ever I threw on a track surface, I was always on grass,” Guenzel said. “It was a little different. I had a little trouble adjusting, but I was able to figure it out by the next meet. It just didn’t click right away.”
The Group meet was also at EHT, and Guenzel just missed breaking his three-week old record by finishing second with a throw of 175-10. At the Meet of Champions, he was 20th with a 162-3, allowing Habgood to beat him out in their final meet together.
But Guenzel will be the first to praise Habgood’s for helping to make him a better thrower, to the point where he will continue to do it in college. Guenzel admits he never saw this coming.
“Not really,” he said. “I used to play baseball, I wanted to try something else. I wanted to focus on hockey but I couldn’t focus on travel baseball and travel hockey, it was just too much money. My one friend who was a senior did track for four years and told me it was fun. So I did it for fun.”
He had fun. And a whole lot more.
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