Published: May 16, 2009 12:00 am      

Jumper looks to the future

ALTOONA — After her final jump of the day, Chartice Wyatt stayed composed all the way off the track at Mansion Park.

Then the emotional storm hit the Johnstown sophomore, who carried the top seed into the long jump at the District 6 Class AAA championships. She wasn’t going to Shippensburg.

But this was not her last chance.

That determination showed as she wrote off her difficult day, which ended the season when the best she could muster was 16 feet, 73/4 inches – well below her season-high 17-41/2, a state qualifying distance.

“I was nervous. Today wasn’t my day, but everybody else jumped real well,” she said.

And it didn’t help that Altoona’s Kelly Davis, whose previous best was a 16-10, knocked down nearly 18 feet of sand on her first attempt.

“It definitely rattled her a little bit,” Johnstown coach Pat Barron said. “But this is her first year really starting to come into her own long jumping. She has two more years, she’ll be back.”

“It scared me because I didn’t think I’d be able to accomplish that,” Wyatt admitted. “But I’m only in 10th grade. I have two more years. I’m OK with it.”

The Trojans had no other entrants seeded in the qualifying range, but with a young squad, that’s not unexpected.

They did place in a handful of events, which bodes well for the future, especially when some of the toughest competition in the state is at this meet – and that’s just two schools.

“It’s a challenge. We’re definitely smaller in numbers than Altoona and State College. They run those college-type programs and it’s just hard to get one relay team or one kid through,” Barron said. “We’ve got freshmen and sophomores mainly at this meet and they’ve done well.”