Based on their season-best performance in a meet this spring, two Brownstown Central Middle School track and field athletes received an invitation to a special event.
Eighth-grader Aden McCrary cleared 9½ feet in the pole vault, and classmate Jaden Disque threw the discus 120 feet, 5 inches.
Their coach, Adam Disque, submitted qualifying information for them and two other Braves in hopes they would be chosen for the Indiana Middle School Track and Field State Finals on May 22 at Terre Haute South Vigo High School.
McCrary wound up being among 12 pole vaulters selected, and Jaden was one of 16 discus throwers chosen.
In the end, McCrary placed sixth with a best clearance of 8 feet, 9 inches and earned a medal, and Jaden finished 10th with a throw of 120 feet.
Considering this is his first season doing pole vault since the 2020 season was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, McCrary was happy to receive the invite.
“It’s pretty cool out of the whole state I got to compete in it,” he said.
McCrary said he tried the pole vault in sixth grade, but he didn’t have much training and wasn’t that strong, so he didn’t end up doing anything with it. He couldn’t even clear 6 feet.
With his seventh grade season being canceled, he worked on the field event and was able to soar this spring.
Jaden also started his field specialty in sixth grade, and since then, he said he has gotten a lot better on his form. That helped him qualify for the state finals.
“It was really cool,” he said. “I was super excited when I found out.”
Adam said the first middle school state finals was in 2019, and once he found out about it this year during his first season as the BCMS boys coach, he knew he wanted to give kids a chance to participate.
“It was just one of those experiences that I thought, ‘Hey, if we’ve got a couple of kids that can experience this, let’s let them do it,’” he said. “It was just a great experience to get up there with kids from everywhere — Center Grove, South Bend, Forest Park, Heritage Hills — just schools from all over the state.”
Adam said the winning pole vaulter cleared 10 feet, 6 inches, while the discus winner threw 164, 3 inches. Middle school boys throw a discus that weighs either 1 kilogram or 1.6 kilograms. The host of each meet determines which one to use, and at the state meet, it was 1 kg.
Adam was proud of his son’s finish because he scratched his first throw that landed in the 130-foot range and had the pressure on him to land two good throws.
He also was proud of McCrary’s performance since he had to keep trying to clear the same heights as the other competitors.
“It’s just a big meet that you just can’t make up. You have to make a pressure throw, have to make a pressure jump, and they both got that,” Adam said.
“(Jaden) was positive about the outcome,” he said. “That was the biggest thing for me is making sure that when he got done, he was happy with the experience and proud of it. For both of them, we wanted to make sure they were actually proud of it.”
Both boys feel the experience will help them as they transition to high school track and field next spring.
“Going into high school next year, I see what I need to work on more and just get better,” said McCrary, who also competed in the 400-meter dash and 1,600-meter relay this spring. “It will help with the coaches seeing me better. Since I went to state the first year I did pole vault, that will help a lot.”
Jaden said he now knows what it’s like to compete in a big meet.
“I think it will just give me an experience of big meets, and it will help me not get as nervous during those bigger meets,” he said.
Adam said both athletes will be working on their events this summer.
“They already as eighth-graders see ‘Hey, I have a chance to be good at this, and I have a chance to help my high school team,’” he said. “They see that now, and so that’s always exciting. Any time kids that work hard can obtain some success is always nice, especially when you’ve got kids that put the work in. They get a chance to really get better and grow.”
Since Brownstown’s first time experiencing the state meet was a success, Adam hopes to see more Braves representing their school there in the future.
“Their goal is to just continue to grow it,” he said. “They were very organized. It was very well run in how they had it set up. None of the little things were missed. They did everything right in how it was run. LED electronic timing boards to electronic measurement… it was absolutely what they would see at a high school state finals as far as the experience and the energy that was put into it.”