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Tayala headed to junior worlds
McDonald High grad will compete in Barcelona
By Joe scalzo
Last Friday in Bloomington, Ind., Matthias Tayala was 400 miles from home and two meters from Barcelona.
Competing in the finals of the hammer throw at the USA Junior Outdoor Championships, Tayala entered his final throw in fourth place.
The top two would advance to next month’s IAAF World Junior Championships in Barcelona.
Everyone else would go home.
“I wasn’t having the best day,” said Tayala, a McDonald High graduate whose best throw to that point was 65.67 meters — about two meters behind Harvard’s Benjamin Glauser’s 67.75. “My coach told me, ‘You’ve got to let loose with your last one’ and I did, I guess.”
The throw went 68.04 meters — more than two meters behind first-place Rudy Winkler (70.75) but good enough for second.
“It wasn’t my best throw but it got me through,” said Tayala, who won Division III state championships in the shot put and discus in 2011 and competed at Kent State last season. “Going there, I pretty much told myself I had a pretty good chance of getting out, as long as I did what I had to do.
“I told myself to do my own thing and do what I could and whatever happens, happens.”
On Sunday, Tayala placed fifth in the discus — “After I knew I made it in the hammer, I just tried to have a good time with the discus and not get too stressed out,” he said — and said he’s “90 percent sure” he’s the only Ohioan to qualify for worlds.
He’ll leave for Barcelona on July 6 and return on July 16, with competition going from July 10-15.
Tayala has been to Germany several times — his mother didn’t move to America until after marrying Tayala’s father, who was stationed in Germany with the U.S. Army — but this will be his first trip to Spain.
“I can’t wait to get that U.S. jersey,” he said. “This is probably the biggest meet I’ll ever do, so I’m just trying to have fun with it.
“I’m still going to try to do my best, though. My goal is pretty much to make it to the finals. If I don’t that, I’ll feel pretty good.”