Cactus Shadows
Cactus Shadows High School Thrower Strikes Big!
April 16, 2011
Queen Creek, AZ
This past weekend was one of the great highlights in my coaching career. I have competed at the highest of levels as an athlete and now that I am officially retired from the sport of track & field I have turned to the new endeavor of coaching high school track. At the beginning of the year I found myself repeating things over and over again and wondered if they would ever sink in. This last Saturday one of my senior athletes, Will Bowers had a day that made all the early season practices seem worth while.
Will is consistently one of the smaller throwers in the bunch(since he runs hurdles, relays and long jumps) but has a great feel for the discus as well as tremendous flexibility. The Queen Creek Invitational had some of the best discus talent in the state in attendance and Will's personal best of 138'8" had him seeded 15th.
His opening throw of 149' not only qualified him for state but put the pressure on the rest of the field. As a coach I was very pleased but as the rest of the pack started to pass him in the middle rounds I asked him to step up again and compete. In the fifth round, he moved up the ranks with a throw of 155'7" placing him third and giving him the 2nd best throw in the state for Division 2. The conditions were very warm (96 degrees) with maybe a 5mph breeze.
Now we go back to work and make the final push towards the State Meet in May. Congrats to Will Bowers and the rest of the Cactus Shadows throwing team.
-Luke Sullivan
