By Harold Raker
The Daily Item
May 07, 2008 05:52 am
—
CATAWISSA -- Graham Huber had one of the biggest days of his career Tuesday afternoon, yet didn't even achieve a personal best.
The Lewisburg senior won the high, long and triple jumps and, for good measure, ran the 400-meter dash for the first time all season -- and won that, too.
Huber's 20 points helped Lewisburg pull away to an 89-61 win in a battle of Susquehanna Valley Conference-Division II unbeaten teams. The win gave the Green Dragons (9-0 overall, 7-0 SVC-II) their third consecutive SVC-II title on the final day of the regular season and the final day of dual meets for the SVC. The league will be replaced by the Heartland Conference next season.
"I'm a competitor. I always go for firsts," Huber said. "It was about getting the team win today. Individual events to me, as long as I got first, I was satisfied and I just wanted to go to the next event and see what I could do."
Lewisburg coach Mark Sundberg said, "We just needed the wins and he was definitely a team player for us."
Huber added, "We've been looking at this meet all year and we just knew we needed to come out and give it everything we had in our last dual meet as seniors ever."
Southern Columbia (6-1, 6-1) kept the pressure on early. The meet was tied at 25 after six events, and Lewisburg led just 37-36 midway through the meet.
"Every time we faltered, we had to get emotionally ready for the next event and I think that's what I'm most proud of with our kids today," Sundberg said.
Both Sundberg and Southern coach Lanny Connor pointed to the Green Dragons' win in the 400 relay as a turning point in the meet.
"For us to not win the 4-by-1, once that happened, I thought, we're in trouble now.' "
Sundberg said, "That was a huge bump for our kids. You could see the emotions in our kids and in our fans after that. We just fed (on those wins) after that."
And, in having Huber run the 400 instead of the final relay, both he and Sundberg were counting on the meet not coming down to the 1,600 relay.
"I didn't think it was going to be that close," Huber said. "I knew they were going to get their points where they got theirs, in their strong events, and we were going to get ours. I knew if we did what we needed to do, we would win the meet."
Sundberg said, "He Huber) didn't flinch when I said how about running the open (400). It was a little risk. Hopefully we would get the points before that. It was a little bit of a risk, but it was the right move."
The 400 relay win, by Danny Talty, Spenser Ercole, Kevin Knoster and Eric Barrett, in 45.6 seconds, came on the heels of Huber's big win in the 400.
Sundberg also said Talty played a major role in the win, as did Eric Barrett in the jumps and the 400 relay.
Connor said the first race of the day, the 3,200 relay, was a good indication of the kind of meet it was going to be. Lewisburg's team of Chad Thomas, Mark Joseph, Peter Jones and Ethan Mutschler won by just a tenth of a second over the Tigers' outstanding quartet of Nate Leighow, David and Billy Shoop and Jeff Bates, with a winning time of 8:25.6 on the slow cinder track.
"Even though we lost (the opening race), everybody knew that this was going to be a knock-down, drag-it-out roller derby event, and that's exactly what it was," Connor said.
Luis Arenas also came up big for Lewisburg, winning the 300 intermediate hurdles in 42.9 seconds after taking second in the 110 hurdles.
Devin Cassels and Joe Stahley won the pole vault (13-0) and discus (122-7), respectively, for the winners.
And that risk?
It didn't matter. Lewisburg did win the 1,600 relay, too, with Brett Aukerman, Peter Jones, Mark Joseph and, as Huber's replacement, Ben Kerlin.
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