Emma Meiczinger and Dan Maida took slightly different routes to cross-country success—one via the baseball diamond and music store, the other by way of sprinters blocks. But both Steinert High juniors have definitely found their niche and still have one year left to go.
Maida dabbled in playing baseball and the guitar prior to high school. He began to realize he had a passion for distance running and went out for Steinert’s distance team in spring track as a freshman. The fall of his sophomore year, he tried cross-country. He has progressed ever since.
Meiczinger, though, showed up at Steinert as a sprinter for spring track. Midway through the season, she was moved to distances, and went from the 400 to the 800 to the 1600 by season’s end. She, too decided to try cross-country as a sophomore, but was sidelined after two meets due to injury. Meiczinger bounced back in the spring and qualified for the Group III meet in the 3,200.
This past cross country season, both exploded onto the scene.
Maida was the overall winner in the Spartans final three tri or quad meets, leading Steinert to the Colonial Valley Conference Valley Division title. He was fifth and sixth overall in the Spartans first two meets.
Maida took a 12th-place medal at the Mercer County meet in a time of 17:12 at Thompson Park in Jamesburg despite running the race with painful shin splints. He was also 12th at the Central Jersey Group III meet in 17:11, also at Thompson Park, and was an excruciating three seconds away from a 10th place finish that would have qualified him for the state meet.
“I felt horrible for him, he’s such a good kid,” coach Ron Yacyk said. “He was disappointed, three seconds away from moving on. There’s really not much I could say to him. The only thing I said, hopefully that will help him, is he’s a junior so he has another year.”
During the regular season, Meiczinger had two firsts, two seconds and a sixth in the Spartans tri/quad meets. She had a tremendous postseason, taking a 13th-place medal in the counties in 20:02, and then advancing to states with a seventh-place time of 19:53. In the Group III meet at Holmdel Park, she ran 16th-place time of 19:53, which is more impressive than the CJ III time as Holmdel is widely regarded as a more challenging course than Thompson. Finishing times at Holmdel can be slower by up to a minute.
“Honestly, it means everything in the world to me to be here,” Meiczinger said while waiting for the Group III race to start. “I didn’t even think I would get past sectionals, so to make it this far is amazing.”
The big winner in it all is Yacyk.
“They are good friends, and the good thing is next year they’re back, along with most of the rest of our kids,” the coach said. “This year was a fantastic year to coach, the boys and girls were great kids. It was fun to go out there every day.”
Maida put in a ton of work over the summer as he ran with his teammates and several runners from Nottingham as well. He is reticent to let competitors know how many miles he logged, but the total was impressive.
“I just focused on my main goals and tried to motivate the people around me so we could have a good team this year,” Maida said. “Every week (the workload) would vary depending on how I felt each week and how my body felt.”
Maida’s first cross-country win came in a tri meet with Hopewell Valley and Trenton, and he took first place in 16:43 at Mercer County Park.
“I was really excited, since I never won a cross country race before with all those teams in it,” He said. “Especially with some tough teams like Hopewell. It just felt good to win it.”
Maida followed by winning a quad meet that included Lawrence and talented Princeton and West Windsor-Plainsboro North.
His final victory was his biggest, as it came against Hightstown, Nottingham and Hamilton. He helped Steinert defeat all three schools, which gave the Spartans the Valley title. Using a strong kick, he pulled away from Hightstown’s James McDaid at the end.
“That was a real team effort,” Maida said. “I won the race but without everyone doing as well as they did, we couldn’t have won it. Our coach told us if we swept the meet we would win the title and that motivated us for weeks to keep working hard and aim for that.”
Maida, however, really didn’t need much motivation to work hard.
“Fantastic,” is how Yacyk described Maida’s season. “There’s a kid that worked hard. I was just telling (former Spartan star runner) Aaron Oldfield, the kid never missed a summer workout. He started preparing in July for the season, working hard every day, doing what he had to with the right attitude all the time.”
To be the kind of leader Maida was as a junior, Yacyk said, is all he can hope for as a coach.
“The kid is a triple threat,” he said. “He is a great runner, a great student and a great kid. He’s an all-around super kid.”
Yacyk had similar words for Meiczinger, who was basically running her first year of cross-country.
“She’s another one; a great student, great kid and fantastic runner,” the coach said. “She worked hard all year, was always the leader of the team. She’s always out in front of everybody working. I try to use her as an example for the other girls. I tell them ‘Stay with Emma, do what Emma does, because she does everything the right way.’ She never misses a practice, never complains no matter what.”
Meiczinger’s crowning achievement was reaching the states. Her goal in the sectionals was to get below 20 minutes, since that is where she hovered for much of the year. She did that and got to advance as well.
“I was surprised at how she did at sectionals,” Yacyk said. “I wasn’t surprised she advanced, but she actually stayed up with the leaders for a lot of the race.”
Once again, it came down to working hard. Meiczinger tried to get in around six miles a day and close to 40 miles a week over the summer. It got more intense in the fall.
“I definitely put in a lot more work than last season,” Meiczinger said. “I was doing the boys’ workouts because we don’t have that many girls, so I trained with the boys and that helps a lot.”
Included in that group, obviously, was Maida.
“We did the same workouts,” Meiczinger said. “I was behind him but tried to keep up. We’re really close friends. We talk at school, talk at practice and definitely motivate each other. We ask each other for help and stuff for races. We both have the same goals so we try to help each other.”
Meiczinger is hopeful that the success she and Maida had this year, coupled with the continued stardom of Nottingham’s Grace Dwyer, might get more athletes in Hamilton Township to try cross-country.
“I really, really hope so,” she said. “Besides the West Windsor schools, our area isn’t really known for running cross country. In Hamilton, it’s like Grace and us. I’d definitely like to get more people out because it’s a great sport. I think if more people actually put in the effort, it could grow. It’s a lot of work, definitely.”
But well worth it, according to Steinert’s dynamic duo.
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