Ithaca indoor track & field on pace for success 

The Ithaca High School indoor track and field team is by far the biggest program in Tompkins County, with 51 total athletes across the boys and girls teams. That means there’s been plenty of standout performers as the regular season winds down.

The Little Red have broken multiple school records this season, ranging from the distance running events to the more technical events like the shot put and the pole vault. It’s all come under first-year head coach Becca Lovenheim—who also coaches the cross country and outdoor track and field teams—and she’s encouraged by what she’s seen from her indoor athletes ahead of the postseason.

“For our athletes who weren’t with us during cross country and are coming to us during indoor, it’s exciting for them to be able to start doing some of the technique work,” Lovenheim said. “They’ve been working [on] fundamentals and conditioning—hopefully on their own during the fall—but getting in a lot of that weight room time, making sure we’re getting all of our drilling in. It can be hard to be patient with wanting to just go ahead and start seeing PRs left, right and central all the time. But we’re really trying to make sure they have a great foundation to be able to see some big marks during postseason indoor, and then certainly with big goals for outdoor,”

As for the athletes coming over from cross country, the terrific trio of Tsadia Bercuvitz, Riley Hubisz, and Noah Hilker have carried over their tremendous success in the fall to the winter. Bercuvitz set the school mark in the 1,500-meter run at the Quinney Invitational with a blistering time of four minutes and 37.05 seconds, good enough for second-best in the entire country. Hubisz—a defending state and federation champion in the 3,200-meter run—also set a school record in that event at the Quinney Invitational, posting the fastest mark by a senior with a time of nine minutes and 34.52 seconds. Hilker has excelled in the 1,600-meter run, currently holding the fourth-fastest time in program history. Lovenheim attributes the trio’s success to a brief break after the cross country season to help them refresh.

“As a coaching staff, it’s important to us to think about where we can build in recovery,” Lovenheim said. “And for athletes that are as motivated as the three of them are—along with many of our others—the inclination is to keep going, and our job as coaches is to make sure that we find spaces where a natural break makes the most sense and that they will be able to see some really positive benefits from that break. We always want to make sure that we’re having them miss the sport just enough that they’re eager to come back rather than running into burnout later on.”

As for the field events, the Little Red have impressed in the pole vault with a pair of sophomores. Zappy Moss holds the 10th grade school record with a vault of 14 feet in their opening meet of the season Ithaca Bomber Invitational. During that same meet, Maren Golden set the new indoor pole vault mark with a height of nine feet. 

“They have to be really self-directed and self-motivated because it’s a very specific event and we don’t have the ability to do as much of that practice,” Lovenheim said. “You can’t really do that in the hallways. They’re definitely doing the work where we can and be as creative as we can… and they really do a good job of listening to any and all feedback they possibly can get from the coaches around them. The pole vault community is pretty cool because there’s a lot of people all rooting for our Section IV athletes.”

The Little Red have also stood out in the throwing events, fittingly spearheaded by the Cornell brothers. Gavin broke the freshman school record in the weight throw and the shot put—the latter of which he now holds the overall program record—while Hayden set the junior mark in the weight throw.

“[Hayden] made it to states [last year],” Lovenheim said. “He was definitely an athlete on the rise, kind of new to it in many ways. He had been throwing but was just sort of putting all the pieces together under Coach [Cole] Clemons’ tutelage, and it’s been exciting to see. Gavin did some throws at the modified level, also with Coach Clemons, and then to have both of them coming in together, it’s been exciting.”

As for the other records broken so far: Avery Whittaker has the program-best time in the 800-meter run, Zine Katari holds the freshman mark in the 1,000-meter run, and Ian Fromme also has a freshman school record in the long jump.

With the postseason beginning on February 8 with the Section IV Class A Championship at Cornell University, the Little Red hope to return to Barton Hall later on in the month with as many athletes as they can for state qualifiers and more school records set.