Leading off today: Former sports information director and television commentator Beano Cook once opined that the only thing more boring to watch than "track" was "field."
Well, the ol' Beanster would have shown up at a few more meets if he had met a few folks like Melissa Kurzdorfer along the way. The Lancaster junior was one of the stars of the show Saturday at the New York State Public High School Athletic Association indoor track championships at Cornell University's Barton Hall.
Kurzdorfer obiterated the state record with a winning throw of 48-2½ to tack nearly four feet onto her winning efforts the previous two seasons and move to No. 2 on the 2009 U.S. indoor list. There's a nice round number in her immediate future, which will make her one of the most watched scholastic throwers in the country this spring.
"Fifty feet is there, it's definitely there," she said. "It's just a matter of doing it in a meet now. I've done it in practice before. I have confidence. It's there."
Kurzdorfer threw 47-9 early this season at Dartmouth to break the New York junior class mark and continue her impressive assault on state records. She began with 37-3.75 as a seventh-grader, 40-2 in eighth grade and 45-5.5 in ninth grade, then capped her sophomore season with a 46-6.75 effort last March at Section 6's state qualifier.
Kurzdorfer threw 46-4½ last spring to win the outdoor title by almost two feet over North Babylon's Vanessa Stewart, who was second again Saturday, but the end of the season couldn't arrive quickly enough to suit her.
"Sophomore year was so bad," she said. "I got to a point where I didn't even want to throw anymore. I needed a break, so that summer I took one, and it really helped. It was the best thing for me. It helped me realize I still loved to throw. I needed a break, I had been throwing since seventh grade."
Kurzdorfer took a roundabout path to the sport. She had planned to play softball as a seventh-grader and was going to use workouts as an indoor sprinter to help prepare. But she pulled a quad muscle and needed to back off. "My coach said, 'Why don't you go over and work with the throwers,' and I never left."
She accepts the fact that field events, particularly the throws, aren't real attention-getters, especially in a state like New York where Fayetteville-Manlius, Saratoga and half a dozen other schools churn out distance runners who regularly post high finishes at national-caliber meets.
She is, however, trying to overcome the perception that the throws just aren't sexy enough to catch on with fans.
"You gotta bring the 'sexy' to it," she said. "A lot of people think, 'Oh, shot-putters are big and burly' and that they're men. You get that a lot -- that they're big and strong and can kick any guy's ass. But that's not true. You get us away from the track and dress us up a bit and we don't look so bad."
Packing a punch: If you think track and field is under the radar, imagine where high school boxing ranks.
Only a handful of schools in the entire country offer the sport, but one of the longest-running programs is right here in New York. The University of Notre Dame is the only school in the country with a longer continuous program than Aquinas Institute in Rochester.
Sixty-seven boys and girls in grades 8 through 12 participated this year, culminating in 20 matches Friday at the 77th annual Mission Bouts before a raucous crowd of about 1,500 fans.
Long-time coach Dom Arioli, a 1973 graduate of the school, began training this year's group in early December, putting the participants through four to six workouts a week. There were elimination bouts to pare down the card for the Mission Bouts and part of the team also traveled to Cincinnati last month for an annual competition against boxers training at Moeller High School.
There's a premium placed on safety and teaching proper technique, but boxing ranks up there with wrestling and football when it comes to grueling sports. Exhibits A and B would be sophomore Zack Trovato and junior James Donofrio, both middleweights on Friday's card.
Trovato, a defensive tackle and offensive guard in the football program, ripped up the ACL and MCL in his right knee last year shortly before the Mission Bouts but still fought. Donofrio, a soccer and baseball player, broke a hand two-thirds of the way through the workouts last year when he landed a punch at an awkward angle.
Both competitors are continuing family traditions. Several of Donofrio's uncles and cousins boxed at Aquinas. Trovato's grandfather was a Little Irish boxer.
