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Bruins drop Chapman, set to face familiar foe
Hyde NWC player of the year
Newberg's Hillman leads list of honorees
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Yates, Yurkovich lead NHS after Day 1 |
The Tiger athletes win the girls javelin and boys
discus events at the district meet in Canby |
By B. Scott Anderson, Newberg
Graphic sports editor
E-mail Scott at banderson@eaglenewspapers.com
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CANBY — One win was a surprise. The other
wasn’t.
Newberg High School sophomore Corey Yates scored an out-of-nowhere
win in the boys discus, while the top-ranked high school girls
javelin thrower in the country, Rachel Yurkovich,
claimed the javelin title for the Tigers on the first day of the
Pac-9 Conference district track meet.
Yates, who had a previous best throw of 141-feet, 10-inches, heaved
a winning toss of 144-9 on his first attempt Thursday. It turned out
to be all he needed.
“I was planning on doing my best,” Yates said. “I didn’t plan on
winning, but there was a lot of competition and I was a little
afraid (McMinnville’s Leon Carl) would beat me but I came out and
showed them that sophomores can do it.”
Carl threw 143-10 for second place. Yates said he thought the rest
of the throwers were taken back by his performance.
“They were all shocked because I’m a sophomore,” he said.
Yates, who didn’t play any other sports for Newberg this year, has
steadily improved each dual meet this season. His previous personal
best was 141-10, which placed him as the No. 3 seed coming into the
meet.
“It’s been up every meet, except for Saturday meets but every dual
meet, (the throws) seem to keep going up,” Yates said.
Yates started out the season throwing around 128 feet and credits
perseverance, practice and focus as the keys of his success. He will
have to have all of those next week at the state track meet when the
competition will throw anywhere from 140 to 190 feet. Yates said he
hopes to throw in the neighborhood of 147 feet at the meet.
“I’m a little nervous, but we’ll see how it goes,” he said.
Another NHS discus thrower, sophomore Sean Carey, placed third at
the meet with a throw of 136-2, a little shy of his personal best of
137-3. Even though Carey didn’t qualify for the state
meet, he said he was happy with his performance.
“I met my own expectations,” he said.
One expectation the NHS girls team had was that Yurkovich would win
the javelin event. She didn’t disappoint her team. On her second
throw she recorded a mark of 156-1, good enough to win the
competition.
Yurkovich said it was nice to have a throw like hers, especially
after her last win was by just 10 inches over Megan Johnson of
Dallas.
“I was really nervous going into it because I haven’t been throwing
my best in prior meets,” she said. “In our last meet, I won only by
10 inches and that was way too close for me. I was just hoping that
it wasn’t going to be like that again, that it wasn’t going to be a
struggle the whole time and hopefully that I could get up on them
instead of having to struggle my way back.”
Yurkovich said she wasn’t sure why she has struggled recently, but
said that it might have been when she went to the XO Invitational at
the University of Oregon earlier this year. Former NHS grad
and current Duck Sarah Malone, Oregon’s top thrower, said she might
try to change her point of focus from the tip of the javelin to a
point somewhere on the field.
“I had done that before and it never worked,” she said. “But I was
throwing terribly in warmups so I decided to try it ... I thought it
was something else. I was really frustrated because I didn’t know
what it was. I guess it works for some people and it doesn’t for
me.”
Yurkovich said after that, she went back to what she had been doing
and it’s paid off.
“I started throwing better in practice and it was finally an end to
my frustration,” she said.
With her win Thursday, it says a lot. The Pac-9 Conference has
three of the top-seven throwers in the country — Yurkovich, Johnson
and Lauren Sexton of Forest Grove. Yurkovich said she thinks it
helps the conference boasts such a competitive field.
“It does because I know that these two girls are probably my best
competition,” she said. “It’s just good to know that I’m in a good
district and that I’ve been challenged so it’s not like I’m doing it
without any pressure at all.”
Don’t think Yurkovich, a former softball player until two years
ago, keeps her eye on what Sexton and Johnson are
throwing on a daily basis. She said that as a softball player, she
was too devoted to it and consequently became burned out on it.
After her freshman year at NHS where she was an all-league pitcher,
Yurkovich gave up softball and went out for track.
“I try not to look at standings,” she said. “I always think I’m
getting too into it. Sometimes when I get really into things like
softball, I don’t know ... That’s why I quit it was because I was so
sick of it and was so frustrated with it.”
She said she goes about her business like everyone else.
“I just go out and practice hard and do what I have to do but I
don’t really look much into the standings and stuff,” Yurkovich
said. “I know who is who and who throws what but I don’t look at the
paper every single day.”
As a softball player, Yurkovich said she used to “cry all of the
time” because it was so frustrating.
“Now if I’m frustrated, I tell myself I can do this,” she said.
“I’m not pressured to do this. I chose to do this and I like having
the pressure there.”
This season, Newberg brought in a new softball coach, Kelly
Johnson. Yurkovich said she entertained the idea of putting her
glove back on playing, also while still competing on the track team.
“I wanted to kind of go back and pitch just because I hadn’t done
it in so long but in the back of my mind, I kind of knew that it
wasn’t going to happen,” she said. “If I did, it would jeopardize
what I have here.”
The district track meet continued Friday but results were
unavailable as of press time.
Notes: Others who competed at the district meet Thursday —
senior Holly Winter placed seventh in the shot put (32-1.5), senior
Paloma Frutos finished third in the shot put (34-1), Ben Barber
placed sixth in the high jump (6-0), senior Vanessa Schmitz finished
fourth in the javelin (123-4).
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From
May 22, 2004,
Newberg Graphic
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