Aubrey Bamber runs and jumps her way into valuable role for Chesterton girls track team and joins three Trojans on a relay that qualifies for national meet

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

No student in the athletic department was busier in the fall than junior Aubrey Bamber, a member of both the girls cross country and soccer teams.
A case could be made that Bamber was too busy to do herself justice in either sport, so great were the demands on her body and time. So, she said, she won’t be doing that again next year. From here on out, Bamber said it’s all running and jumping, all the time. She has given up soccer.
The crazy fall schedule was not without its long-term benefit. Bamber said running cross country gave her more endurance for the 400 meters, which is grouped with the sprints but eats alive sprinters who don’t have enough stamina to survive the second half of the race.
“I really like running,” Bamber said. “I really like the environment. I like Coach M (Lindsay Moskalick.) She’s definitely a big factor in why I like cross country and track so much and why I want to work so hard. She pushes our 4x4 team to our best level.”
Bamber opened the outdoor season with a long jump of 17 feet at Valparaiso, easily her best leap at a pit jumpers favor because the runway tilts downward. She followed that with a 15-7 at Saturday’s Garry Nallenweg Chesterton Relays, fourth best at a meet where Portage’s Kara Williams had the best with a 17-4 jump.
After completing her four jumps, Bamber prepared for the first of her two 400-meter runs at the meet. She anchors the 4x400 relay and did so again in the mixed gender 4x400 Saturday. She said she had 60-second splits in both.
Junior Gretta McCrovitz, freshmen Taylor Kisic and Julia Whitenack, and Bamber finished second Saturday with a time of 4:14.45.
Roughly 90 minutes later, Bamber was back on the track, this time with senior Aaron Resto, McCrovitz and senior Kieran Barnewall as her teammates in the mixed 4x400 relay. They needed a 3:45 to qualify for the New Balance nationals in Philadelphia in June. They ran a 3:43.77 to win the race as the only team to beat the qualifying time. Depending on the schedules of the four runners, a road trip in June is a possibility.
“We all ran our best times,” Bamber said. “We were all locked in. I watched how fast Aaron came in and I was like, ‘I really need to run fast now.’”
She did, and as the weather warms and the effects of the spring workouts sink in, Bamber has the sort of talent to make herself a candidate to contend for top three finishes in both the 400 meters and long jump at regional, which would earn her a trip to the state meet.
“I like how much potential we have as a team. We have lot of good people on the team,” she said, mentioning Kenedi Bradley, Ava Kontos and McCrovitz, for starters. “I’m surrounded by greatness, and I think it really pushes me to try harder in practice and it shows in the meets.”