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A dedicated dedication
Quick off the gun. Hug the rail. Get that split. Focus. Fight 'em off. Breathe. Finish strong.Thoughts like these subconsciously invade a runner's brain during intense competition, but not one of them flowed through Westfield junior Matt Anderson's mind last Saturday afternoon.
Breezing along inside the George Mason University Fieldhouse for the Virginia AAA state indoor track and field championships, Anderson earned an emotional first-place finish in the 1,000-meter run with a time of 2 minutes, 31.15 seconds, thinking less about a race plan and more about his best friend's health plan.
“Throughout the race, I was just thinking, 'Do this for Nick,' and that helped me keep going,” explained Anderson, talking about his best friend and former teammate, Nick Plummer, who was diagnosed last fall with juvenile dermatomyositis, more commonly known as JDM.
“It's hard for him to walk,” Anderson added, “so I came out [Saturday] and I really wanted to win this race for him.”
According to Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, JDM is an autoimmune disease that affects 3,000 to 5,000 children in the United States, the majority of them under the age of 16, which makes the 18-year-old Plummer's case fairly irregular. There's not a known cause of JDM, and its effects range from skin rashes to muscle weakness to calcium deposits under the skin or in the affected muscles.
After enrolling at Virginia Tech last fall, Plummer was diagnosed with JDM at the Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore, Md. The 2007 graduate of Westfield High School has endured chemotherapy, and is currently hospitalized at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
Nearly three weeks ago, Plummer was starting to walk on his own, but he's since hit another rough patch, creating a sense of purpose for his former teammates and coaches.
“All three of the last meets people have been thinking about him,” said Westfield assistant coach Kelly Deegan, who is also Westfield's cross country coach. “That's when he kind of took a turn again and went back to the hospital.”
JDM is classified as a treatable disease, and most children affected move into remission within two years, according to the Cincinnati Medical Center. Various drugs are prescribed to keep the disease in check, and large amounts of physical therapy are often required to regain muscle strength.
Anderson's performance – although not medically chartable – assuredly had a positive influence on Plummer, and a host of other Bulldogs helped out as well.
Senior Tasia Potasinksi had perhaps the state's most spectacular individual performance, winning both the 1,000 (2:57.59) and the 1,600 (4:59.04). Potasinski also ran the final leg on Westfield's state champion 4x800 relay team (9:12.18), sharing the honor with classmates Brittany Sevachko, Eman Bani and Kerry Hartman
“That doesn't happen very often that somebody wins three events,” said Westfield coach Scott Raczko. “That's as good as it gets on the running end of it, and that doesn't happen very often on the state level.”
Potasinski wasn't the only local distance runner to find success. Chantilly junior Lia DiValentin finished second in the 3,200, an event crammed full of talent. DiValentin jockeyed with good friend Hiruni Wijayaratne of Herndon before finally succumbing to a late push out from Midlothian's Kathleen Lautzenheiser.
“Coming into this race, I had no idea what to expect,” said DiValentin, who finished with a time of 10:48.86 to Lautzenheiser's 10:48.80. “I knew this race was loaded from top to bottom.”
In the boys portion of the 3,200, Clifton native Evan Heflin finished the race in 9:38.62 for Jefferson, good enough for sixth place.
In the pole vault, Chantilly junior Wesley Sun earned a sixth-place finish with a mark of 13 feet, 6 inches, while Westfield senior David Skahn bested his region mark in the high jump by four inches, posting a 6-4 leap and finishing third.
Chantilly's Raymond Urrutia finished 12th in the 300 with a time of 36.17, while Centreville senior Jordan Grant finished fifth in the girls 300, clocking in at 40.92.
Westfield sophomore Kaylin Newman recorded a sixth-place finish in the girls shot put, tossing a 36-4 1/4, and Sevachko finished two places behind Potasinski in the 1,000 (3:00.51).
As a team, Westfield's girls finished third with 42 points, trailing only Western Branch (57) and Landstown (64).
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