Serving Lucas, Ottawa, Sandusky and Wood Counties
One minor adjustment led to a school-record performance and a conference title in discus for Genoa’s Lynde Hartman at the Northern Buckeye Conference Championship on May 13.
“I was walking out to get my discus, and I saw it was past the 120 line, and I just said to myself, ‘I hope that it's not one inch under the record. I just hope that I actually got it, or I am going to be really upset,’” Hartman said. “But when I heard them say 123, I was so happy. I just started to run. My heart beated so fast.”
Hartman’s throws coach, Thomas Bergman, said Hartman’s previous season high was 93-4 at the Delta Duel in the second meet of the season. An ankle injury has since limited her progress as she worked on tweaking her power stance with her left foot, where she was over rotating.
“We were falling into the circle, so you come out the back of the circle, and you fall into it,” Bergman said. “So every time we get in our power position, they're more or less falling backwards, and throwing with no power, like tossing a German hand grenade.
“We've been saying all season, we have to fix this foot, and then we're just going to absolutely launch this thing. Unfortunately, we rolled an ankle the first track meet of the year. So we had to try and fix form that involves ankles with a bad ankle. It wasn't really going well at first, but then we put it together the day before (the NBC Championship).”
Hartman had topped 90 four times previously this year, including 92-5 in the Oak Harbor Invitational, the last meet before the NBC Championship. Once there, her first throw was 83. Then, it finally happened, and she threw 123-9 for the title.
“I had seen glimpses of it in practices, so my confidence was always there,” Bergman said. “How many times do you think I told you, the moment you fix that thing, you will launch the thing and break the school record?”
“Like 10 times a day at every practice,” Hartman said.
“So my confidence was there,” Bergman said. “Not to say it wasn't frustrating. Lynde’s a very hard worker, which I think added to my frustrations in that you hate to see someone who works so hard not immediately accomplish something, but it's a difficult sport, right? For me, it confirmed all this hard work she put in.
“The difference was her foot went right here, and her thumb was where it needed to be, and she just sent it.”
Hartman, a junior, said she’s had the previous school record established by Barb Lentz in 1980 memorized since she was in eighth grade.
Bergman said that in the beginning of the season, the two of them set a cone out, and the cone's name was Barb.
"Every day, Barb was the nemesis,” he said. “I bet she's a wonderful lady. But every day it was like, we're gunning for Barb. Here we go. And when we'd throw close to Barb, or even over in practice, it was like, let's do it when it counts, right?”
Thus, it was a big moment for Hartman once she achieved the feat.
“It feels great, just coming from having multiple meets where I've been throwing 70, 80 … barely 90, and then just being able to do what I know I can do, it just feels awesome,” she said.
Hartman’s next step is consistency, and maybe shooting for another record as Woodmore legend Megan Pendleton holds the all-time NBC Championship meet mark of 138-01 from 2013.
“I always say there's two vectors you can improve on,” Bergman said. “There's distance, and then there's consistency. You'd like to be in that top right quadrant of consistent and long. But it's a game of 10,000 reps, as they say. And we have to build on it and hit the weight room, and we're only a junior, so we'd love to come back here and smack 140 feet right in the face. That would be pretty cool.”
