Poland’s runners have faster times

By Mark W. Miller

Sean Murphy leads the Bulldogs into the Division II regional meet Saturday.

POLAND — With the exception of one, the top five runners for the Poland High School cross country team are running 5000 meters in the 17-minute level.

The exception is junior Sean Murphy who has a best time (16:59).

“When we started the season the kids, seniors Mike Kurjan [17:23] and Ryan Shields [17:40], and juniors Mike Filisky [17:49] and Murphy and sophomore Matt Gleydura [18:00] were running 19 and 18 minutes,” Poland coach Don Smaltz said. “They have come a long way in improving their times.”

That improvement helped the Bulldogs place third behind Crestwood and Lakeview at last week’s Division II district meet.

“Our goal was to make it to the regional meet,” Smaltz said. “Now our goal is getting to state and that will be tough to do because there will be a lot of good team at Canton GlenOak Saturday.

“The kids are working hard preparing for the race,” Smaltz said. “They are self motivated and that’s been the secret to are success and it’s why I think we’ll be in contention at the regional.

Co-coaches Dave DiRienzo and Smaltz led Poland to cross country championships in the All-American Conference Red Tier, the eight-team Ashtabula Invitational and nine-team Niles invitational. The Bulldogs finished second to the powerful Boardman High squad at the Mahoning County and Salem invitation races.

Smaltz was a teacher and coach at Poland High from 1971-88 when he retired. He returned as coach in 1999.

“This is one of my better teams,” Smaltz said. “No matter what I say, the kids are very respectful. I don’t have to holler, I ask them to do something and they do it.

“Coach DiRienzo, who is a teacher at Poland High, has been instrumental in helping out with the team and he gives them good advice,” Smaltz said.

Shields, Smaltz’s grandson, said, “One of are original goals when we made them back in August was to make it to the regional and we are looking forward to this meet.

“My freshman and sophomore years, we made it to the regional, but we didn’t last year,” Shields said. “This season, it’s much different because are team is much more relaxed and more determined to make to state and the seniors realize we have just have one more chance at getting there.”

“We have improved a lot,” Shields said. “Murphy breaks out, but the rest of us usually run in a pact because we all try to do the best we can while having a desire to compete against each other and have motivation to do better.”

Shields carries a 4.0 grade-point average. He is student council president and is a member of the National Honor Society.

He’s a varsity swimmer for Poland in the winter and runs track in the spring. Shields said that the guys on the cross country team get along well together, go to football games and just hang out.

“My grandfather has a lot of knowledge just about running in general,” Shields said. “Coach DiRienzo knows a lot about the aspects of running and brings a relaxed attitude to the team.”

Kurjan started running cross country as a freshman.

“It feels just great for us to get out of district into region because we only had one runner make it last year and this time we wanted to give him company and we are excited about that,” Kurjan said.

miller@vindy.com