Marauders Track is Locked and Loaded for a Big Season
By: Sam Tomm
In the past few years, St. Francis has dominated Monsignor Martin Track and Field, winning 5 straight championships. However, times are beginning to change as the St. Joe’s Marauders track team has built their strongest squad in years and are prepared to fight for their first look at championship glory since 2016.
The team is extremely well-rounded, and has plenty of depth which the team’s coaches have emphasized as something that’s very important in track. First year head coach Dave Rozak said on the matter, “The more athletes we have coming out, the better we can get. The most important thing to having a successful track team is having depth”.
In track and field, there are 4 main categories, sprints, distance, jumps and throws. The Marauders have a balance of high end talent in all 4 categories. Headliners include senior Dennis Bobbitt, the team’s only athlete to qualify for the state championship meet last season, participating in the long jump, while also anchoring the 4x100m relay and being the top ranked triple jumper in the league. Junior Michael Moser is currently ranked 12th in the state for the shot put, and 77th in the discus throw, both of which place him at the top of the league rankings. Senior Sam Tomm holds the school’s indoor 3200 meter school record, and is also the top ranked league runner for the 1600 and 3200 meter events, being ranked 30th in the state in the 3200 currently. Tomm is continuing his athletic career on the Division 1 level next fall at St. Bonaventure University.
Most of the track team’s schedule is comprised of dual meet, a head to head matchup with another team in the Monsignor Martin league, every event is scored on a scale of 5 points, 3 points and 1 point to the top 3 finishers, while in a relay race the winning team is awarded 5 points, while 2nd place is awarded none. Therefore in order to win, you must not just have top end talent in a couple events, but also a well rounded team that can place in those 2nd and 3rd slots across a multitude of events. This depth becomes even more important at the Monsignor Martin Championship in late May, an event that will feature 8 league opponents where the winner will take home the All-Catholic championship. At this race, the top 6 finishers score points in each event, with the total descending from 10 points for 1st to 1 point for 6th (10-8-6-4-2-1). Therefore it is all the more important to get as many athletes in this top 6 per event as possible.
Fortunately, the team does have this quality depth with 62 athletes, the highest the team’s numbers have been in years. Future SUNY Geneseo sprinter John Cianciosa, along with Isaac Gwitt and Dom Cook Jr. have scored major points in the sprinting categories, while Lucas Gawron and Noah Mercado anchor the distance events with Tomm. As for throwers, future St. John Fisher shot putter Andrew Connolly, Jeremiah Guerrero and Ryan Mucica, among others, have potential to score points for the Marauders behind Moser, while Benedict Musumbu, Josh DeSilva and Davion Becker are the leaders in the jumping events behind Bobbitt.
The Marauders have had a solid start to the season, placing 3rd overall at the Cheektowaga Warrior Relays meet and starting off the league season 3-0, with victories over Timon 70-35, Nichols 98-7 and a big victory over rival Canisius 94-20. The schedule will only get tougher as the year progresses, with invitationals at Webster, Hilton, West Seneca West and Williamsville South, and the biggest hurdles yet to come in league play, being St. Francis..
With all of this, the team has come under new leadership with Dave Rozak stepping into the new head coach position, after former coach William Chesebro stepped down to spend more time with family. Rozak has years of experience coaching track and field, specifically throwing, at Park Hill High School in Kansas City, while also being a coach on the Marauders football team and a teacher in the Academic Enrichment Center. “I’ve always enjoyed coaching track….last year I didn’t get to coach track and I really missed it…when the opportunity came up I had to take advantage of it.” In talking about the adjustment from football to track and field, Rozak says they are two completely different sports to coach, and that the main thing he can carry over from football to track is emphasizing work ethic, and prioritizing hard effort.
Offering some carry over on the staff is distance coach Emily Lowe, sprinting coach Keith Weekley and throwers coach Mike Makowski. When asked about what are the biggest changes coming into the season, Coach Lowe cited the expansion of the coaching staff as one of the most positive changes for this upcoming season, with sprinting Coach Anna Jones also joining Coach Rozak as new members of the staff. When asked on how she approaches coaching, as the head of the distance squad Coach Lowe says, “I'm pretty routine oriented and I have high expectations and standards, but I also try to make it fun. I think I also make an effort to get to know my athletes as people so I can improve upon my ability to coach them. Every athlete thinks differently and it's important to know that and be able to coach to those differences.”.
Each of the past three years the track team has closed the gap slowly on St. Francis, going from scoring 54 points to St. Francis’s 221 in 2021, all the way down to 201-105 St. Francis in 2023 at All-Catholics. Both Coach Rozak and Coach Lowe are extremely optimistic that this is the year they are finally overtaken. When asked about Coach Lowe’s goal for the season, she said, ”I'd love to see us win All Catholics. We have a large talented senior class that has worked incredibly hard over the last four years and really bought into building our program. I'd also like to see us send a large group downstate to compete at the CHSAA championship meet and of course see every member of the team improve!”Coach Rozak’s goal, simply, is to win state championships.
It remains to be seen whether the high expectations of the coaches will be met, but as of right now, the Marauders are on the right track to have their best season in years.