Track and field athletes Kenedi Bradley, Arti Haney and Gretta McCrovitz seek to add to their first-place DAC hardware today at the conference championship at Crown Point

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

A reserve running back on the football team in the fall and a wrestler in the winter, Arti Haney is fast and springy, two qualities that if blended with the proper technique can make for a successful long jumper.
“I like that it’s not like you’re just running and it’s not like you’re just jumping, like the high jump,” Haney said. “You have to combine both the skills of jumping and running.”
Haney combined them well enough two years ago to become the surprise first-place finisher of the entire DAC championship meet at Lake Central, winning the long jump with a leap of 17 feet, 10-¼ inches.
“That number was just so out of there because I had been jumping low 17s then I pulled the 17-10,” Haney said. “I did not think I’d get it.”
Upsets can happen in the long jump, where so many variables can throw a jumper off.
Long jumpers call what they do during their warmup periods “runthroughs,” and they are so important because every pit is different and the only way to get a true feeling for the weather conditions is to do a dress rehearsal: “Once you get your runthrough down and you’re pretty much on your mark, if there is any small change, then you’re either over or behind. It can be affected by so many things, like how your body’s feeling, the wind, the temperature, the pit, since the boards are always different. On average I try to do about three runthroughs. I try to go the same speed as my actual jumps, so about my 100 speed. I want to be consistent to make sure my mark will be on when I go to my actual jumps.”
Haney won’t be favored in the event, but once someone has done something once, if they do it again nobody is shocked.
Valparaiso’s Saylor Gapinski has easily the best mark in the field this season with an 18-3.25. Jurnee Pearson has jumped a 17-2 this season, a little higher than that in the past. Haney beat them both two years ago at the DAC meet.
Senior Aubrey Bamber is Chesterton’s other jumper today. She reached 17 feet in her first year as a long jumper a year ago and has gone 16-8 this season.
She too lists consistency as the key and has a theory on why it can be so difficult to attain.
“I think we’re all really mental about it,” Bamber said. “We look at our best mark and we think we should be jumping it every time and that doesn’t happen every meet. It’s like, ‘If I can jump 17, why am I jumping 15 today?’ I think it gets in our head.”
Bamber’s 17-footer came at Valparaiso, which has everyone’s favorite pit because it slopes downhill at the end and the sand is lower, so the jumpers hit the sand later, and therefore have longer jumps. So, she said, she’ll be happy getting in the 16s today and would like to hit 17 before the year ends.
“It’s so technical,” Bamber said. “If we don't feel like our steps are right, or if we're not going fast enough, we're not gonna be on the board and that can take away, like, a foot off the jump. I think it's a practice thing and just knowing what you're doing and knowing how your body works. Like, if you do a runthrough, and you're behind the board, you're like, ‘Oh, I ran too slow. I did this wrong.’ Then you can fix it, you can, like, re-warm up, or if you can't go any faster, you can move where you're starting. So I think it comes with practice and knowing all the different steps to long jump.”
Haney is just one of three athletes on this year’s roster who can lay claim to a DAC title. Gretta McCrovitz ran a leg of the Trojans’ 4X100 relay that won it two years ago. She won’t be the favorite in the 400 meters, but is a darkhorse candidate.
Kenedi Bradley will try to add to her DAC trophy case and will run the 100, 200 and 400 races and will anchor the final race of the meet, the 4X400. She is the two-time defending champion in the 100 and the defending champ in the 200. She also anchored the relay on which McCrovitz won her DAC title in 2024.
Merrillville runners Jordyn Fort (57.10) and Lailah Wesby (58.90) have the best times in the 400 field, followed by McCrovitz (59.81) and Bradley (59.84).
“It’s been fun,” McCrovitz said of her senior season. “I’m just trying to enjoy every bit of it.”
McCrovitz has been a good resource for Bradley in the 400. Almost strictly a 100 and 200 runner in early years, McCrovitz made an impressive transition to the 400 last season, running a 59.33 at the DAC meet, a 59.53 at the sectional and a 59.21 at the regional, finishing fourth, one spot out of making it to state, edged by Valparaiso’s Lucy Moye (59.12) by a margin smaller than a tenth of a second.
McCrovitz shared with Bradley what worked for her in making the transition to the longer sprint.
“Definitely you have to use your start from the 100 and 200, that should help her get out of the blocks strong and then the last 200, it’s her race, she’s good at the 200, that’s what she does,” McCrovitz said earlier this season. “I told her once you get to that mark, you just have to push and put everything you have out there. Once you get to that 200, you have to trick your mind and just say this is a new race. You just have to go.”
That’s what McCrovitz did to expand her distance.
“It was hard at first, but the more you do it in practice with your teammates encouraging you, it’s pretty good,” she said.
Bradley is the top seed in both the 100 and 200 races, but hasn’t yet come close to her times from her junior year postseason. Valparaiso’s Mia Smith is her toughest competition in the 100 and Smith and her Valpo teammate Brianna Fincannon represent her biggest threats in the 200.