Announcement

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Matias Serna - National Racewalk Champion

Posted by Adrian Jaime on Aug 22 2014 at 05:00PM PDT

Matias Serna

National Racewalk Champion

 

The best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry, and like many others before him, that is exactly what Matias Serna experienced at the AAU National Junior Olympic Racewalk Championship.

 

The 16 year old PSJA Jefferson EC High School All-American freshman had previously won gold medals in each of the 12, 14 and the 15-16 year age brackets.  He was now back with intensions of, not only repeating as the 15-16 year age bracket gold medalist, but intended to outpace his own teammate, 18 year old five time high school All-American Geraldo Flores, in the 17-18 year age bracket group.

 

“Coach, may I go around Geraldo if he has any problems?”  Matias reluctantly asked his coach,  A.C. Jaime, a day before the race.  He had just finished his USATF Junior Olympic National Championship race five days earlier in Houston with a time of 14:57.63.  Just half a second behind Geraldo.  He felt he had a good chance today, since Geraldo was still recovering from a severe eye infection.

 

Unexpected things do happen and 16 year old Amberly Melendez, the boys teammate, did the unexpected that day.  She outpaced the prior 17-18 year age bracket record holder.  Brenda McCollough of Kansas, as the boys sat on the sideline waiting their turn to race.  Both looked at each other and realized that the same could happen to them as they too were prior year gold medalists in their repective age brackets.

 

Geraldo jumped ahead at the sound of the gun with Matias in hot pursuit.  They went around the first lap in a time of 1:56 and repeated the same time on the second lap just as they had in practice all season long.

 

The second unexpected moment of the day happened to Matias one hundred meters into his 3rd lap as he was a yard behind Geraldo.  He fell to his knees after stepping on his own loose shoe lace, and recovered quickly only to fall again seconds later.

 

Geraldo was 100 meters ahead by the time Matias corrected his problem.  Worst of all, Matias other teammate, Eduardo Uria, had come shoulder to shoulder with him, challenging him for their age bracket gold medal.  However, the rookie, while doing extremely well in the short time since joining the club, was no match to Matias as the seasoned racewalker soon recovered and came home with his fourth gold medal, as well as a bruised & scraped knee.

 

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