Concord Track Disappointed by Season Cancelation

Concord High School athlete Vincent Giuliano won the Michigan High School Athletic Association Division 4 title in the 200-meter dash in 2019. Photo by Jeff Steers, JTV Sports.

By Jeff Steers
JTV Sports

(April 21, 2020 6:46 PM) Back before 1975, sportscasters and statistics used to decide who was the “mythical” state champions in Michigan High School Athletic Association football.

On paper, Concord High School was probably the favorite to win the MHSAA Division 4 state title in boys’ track.

Unfortunately for the Yellow Jackets, the season was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic and athletes will have to wonder “what if.”

“It is a tough year to lose a season … as any year would,” CHS Coach Mike Jurasek said. “I think we would have scored in the 60s at the state meet … which would have been enough to win.”

Jurasek – a state-champion track and field coach at Albion High School – is right. The highest total to win a state title in track and field in Division 4 the last five years is 66 points. The average for five seasons is 51.4 points for the winning team.

The Yellow Jackets had a number of all-state returning athletes.

Vincent Giuliano won the 200-meter dash at the state meet and was a member with Jack Freeman, Zeavion Jones and Bryan Smith in the winning 1,600-meter relay team at the state meet in 2019. Bryce Black was third in the discus; Josh Sharp, Jones, C.J. Glaspie, and Giuliano were fifth in the 400-meter relay; the same four finished fourth in the 400-meter relay; Freeman, Smith, Jonathan Mikovits, and Matt Record were third in the 3,200-meter relay.

Josh Sharp was a regional champ in the 100-meter dash, but did not run at the state meet, Christian Kirkland was a conference champion in the Big Eight Conference, and Freeman and Smith both qualified for the 800-meter run in the state meet, but both tripped.

School was postponed in mid-March, but the governor canceled the remainder of the school year the first week in April. The MHSAA followed suit a couple of days later – canceling the remainder of winter tournaments and spring sports.

“I thought we would be off two weeks, go to spring break, and come out rolling after that,” CHS senior Bryce Black said. “We were hopeful to have a 2020 season for a long time.”

Besides athletics, seniors may have been unable to take ACT testing, go to prom, and attend graduation.

Black said he continues to work out in hopes of throwing at some AAU-type meets.

He plans to go to college but is unsure of his choice.

“I am doing a lot of searching now,” Black said.

On the girls’ side, seniors Lynae Vasquez, Billie Weeks, and Madison Smith will not have the opportunity to compete in track and field this season.

Weeks – who also played softball – was a Division 4 state qualifier last year in the long jump, high jump, shot put, and 400-meter relay.

Coach David Jordon called Smith a “hard-working senior who was going to be a team leader” in 2020.

Vasquez was someone Jordon said he could “count on to be at practice every day and do whatever he asked of her.”

Junior Skylar Thompson earned a pair of all-state medals in track and field last year for Concord.