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Rockets 4x800 relay headed to state
By Joe Scalzo
On Wednesday afternoon at the Division III regional meet, Maplewood boys track coach Ted Rupe was recalling Trumbull County’s state championship reign in the 4x800-meter relay earlier this decade when he turned to former McDonald standout Joe Kunkel and asked, “Who won it in 2004?”
Kunkel, with mock indignation, said, “You don’t remember? We did. Of course.”
“I think we won it from 2001-03,” Rupe said.
“Stop pretending to be humble,” Kunkel joked.
“It’s not humbleness,” Rupe said. “It’s Alzheimer’s or something.”
About a half-hour before that conversation, Rupe’s Rockets had won a regional title in the event with a time of 7:50.83, shattering the school record by more than four seconds and lowering the one-year-old meet record by seven seconds.
St. Thomas Aquinas, which set that regional record and finished second at the state meet, was just four seconds behind Wednesday.
“Aquinas was tough,” Rupe said. “We knew they would be.”
Over the past few years, the two schools have developed a little bit of a rivalry due to their success in cross country. The Knights have had the upper hand over the past few seasons and senior Eric Rupe had to run a scintillating anchor leg just to hold on for Wednesday’s win.
“That helped, for sure,” Eric said afterward. “They beat us last year and they returned everyone from that team. And we returned everyone, too.”
Maplewood finished fourth at last year’s state meet with four juniors: Rupe, A.J. Grayson, Aaron Harrison and Tom Bottorff. All four can run the 800 under two minutes, an almost unheard-of situation for Division III.
Thing is, as fast as the Rockets are in the 4x800, they’d be even better in a 5x800. Freshman Wyatt Hartman has worked his way into the lineup and ran the second-fastest leg Wednesday, behind Rupe.
“Most good 4x8 relays have three really good runners and the fourth is a little slower,” said Eric Rupe. “We have five, really, who can all go under two minutes.”
Before the race, Ted Rupe told his team they each needed to run a 1:58.8 to get the school record, which was set by the 2003 state championship team.
“A.J.’s first lap was a 1:58.8,” Ted said, smiling. “I wish I had told him he could have gone faster.
“From there, everyone got a little bit faster.”
The Division III 4x800 will be the first running final of this weekend’s state meet, with the boys race starting around 9:45 a.m. From 1999-2005, Trumbull County teams won every Division III 4x800 title, spreading them around between McDonald (1999, 2000, 2004), Maplewood (2001-03) and Lordstown (2005).
No Trumbull County team has finished in the top three since.
Normally, Maplewood’s time would make the Rockets a prohibitive favorite in the race but they’re not taking anything for granted.
Not with Aquinas in the race.
“They’ve kicked our butts the last three or four years,” Eric Rupe said. “They beat us by four points in cross country last fall and got a [runner-up] trophy and really broke all our hearts.
“Right now, it looks like us and Aquinas [in the 4x800] but there’s always one or two teams that pop off crazy races at state.”
If the Rockets can pop off an even crazier race, they’ll have a chance of breaking the Division III record of 7:48.39, set by Yellow Springs in 2007. (Cleveland Heights holds the all-divisions record of 7:41.17, set at the 2007 Division I meet).
“I remember seeing those guys and thinking they were crazy fast,” said Eric Rupe. “I never thought we’d be half as good as that.”
Now they can be better.
They just need to hold off the Knights to make it a really special morning.