If the first week is any indication, the 2012 scholastic track and field season in the area could be one to remember for a long time.
Consider some of the performances that have already been recorded:
* Southern Columbia's Matt Moore, the defending AA state runnerup in the 300-meter intermediate hurdles, has run an 11.0 100, a 14.9 110-meter high hurdles and a 41.1 300-meter IH.,
* Shamokin Area stunned Division I of the Pennsylvania Heartland Athletic Conference with an 89-61 win over defending District 4-AAA champion Selinsgrove, in which the Indians showed some amazing depth, sweeping the Seals in four track events, taking all three relays and running out at least four different 1600-meter relay teams. Some of the kids on the backup teams are seriously pushing the Indians top team, which was district runnerup last year.
One of the top runners, Brandon Nash, beat one of the others, defending district runnerup Matt Gass, in the 400 and the Indians' winning 1600-meter relay team ran 3;37.47 without Gass, who earlier won the 200 and also ran on the 3200-meter relay, but wasn't feeling well by the final race. Speaking of the Indians' 3200-meter relay team, that group posted a time of 8:24.16 at the Tim Cook Invitational in Chambersburg last weekend.
In all honesty, it's not clear if this shows how good Shamokin is or if Selinsgrove has come back to the pack, and it's probably a combination of the two. But anytime you beat a team for the first time since 1971, which is what Shamokin's coaches think is the case, it makes you take notice.
* Southern Columbia's Tom Schetroma is already pushing 52 feet in the shot put and Mount Carmel's Eric Joraskie has already hit 150 feet in the discus.
* Mount Carmel's Elijah Duran set a school record of 44 feet, 8 inches in the triple jump, and not just any school record. The old mark of 44-5 was set in 1985 by Mike Diminick.
* North Schuylkill's Abby Warner has run a 12:36 3200 meters and Carter Green has thrown the discus 118-3½.
* Then there is Mount Carmel's Gabby Engelke. She had a pretty good day in the Red Tornadoes' 84-64 win over Milton. She beat her teammate and defending district champ Heather Bolick in the javelin with season's best 117-3, then broke Rosa Jarvis' eight-year-old school record in the pole vault with a vault of 10 feet. Jarvis did 9-9 in 2004.
Some of the early season performances can be directly attributed to the great two weeks of weather in mid-March, while the teams were still in preseason practice. In recent years, much of the work done at that time of year was done indoors, particularly in the technique-heavy field events and hurdles, but this year, everybody got a head start on their training because of the cooperative weather.
Now the trick will be for coaches to keep their charges from peaking too early. But since the spring sports season is basically only a two-month season compared to the fall and winter seasons, there's hardly enough time to get burnt out, anyway.
Season's bests
We'll run our first installment of season's bests times, distances and heights today, and we're following the same formula as in past years. We'll consider all performances by athletes from area schools, no matter where they are done, and athletes from opposing schools will be included if the performance was at one of the area facilities (Shamokin, Mount Carmel, Southern Columbia, North Schuylkill).