Rich Donahue They talk about late bloomers in sports all the time, whether it’s pro, college or high school.
On the track, Hopewell’s Zach Lucas is blossoming at the right time!
A senior hurdler for the Coach Jeff Brunton’s Track and Field program, Lucas joined the team for the first time last season. Though he had never run track before, Lucas had always dreamed of competing in the hurdles. After trying out some different events, Zach knew the hurdles were his right spot.
“Last year was my first year and I’ve always wanted to do hurdles for practice,” said Lucas. “I did a little bit of the triple jump and I just hurt my leg too much so I decided that wasn’t for me.”
“Going to our first meet last year, I ended up doing the 100 and the 200. I didn’t even touch hurdles to start. Then going to the second half of last season. I started off doing the 300m hurdles and then the 110.”
That first year track was a great experience for Lucas, filled with memories with his teammates and running in the WPIAL Team Championships.
Hopewell’s Zach Lucas
“Last year was amazing,” Lucas said. “We went to team championships for WPIAL, which we haven’t really been there much, that was really exciting. Going to invitationals was really exciting, too. It was really fun.”
“One of my favorite parts about invitational is we would go to the meets and the meets will be done 6-7 hours later. It would be like 8 o’clock at night and we would go out to eat afterward as a team and it was just like one of the best times ever. I think that’s what really encouraged me to come back. I really just enjoyed that.”
The fact that Lucas is starting to excel has also made the sport fun.
The confidence Lucas gained last year has already shown up in a big way. MileSplit USA, a national website, listed the senior as one of the top 50 most improved 110m hurdlers, going from 19.20 to 15.89 on his time.
Lucas couldn’t believe it when he saw that he made the list.
“I was really shocked,” Lucas stated. “I was just going to MilesSplit and I saw my name had been included in a headline and I scrolled down there. I was 50 on the dot. I was like this is crazy.”
A lot of that improvement Lucas credits to his coaches.
“They’re all really supportive,” Lucas said. “I think that’s one thing that Coach Brunton is known for. He’s very supportive and he really looks out for you. He really encouraged me to push through it and that I can do it. I really adapted to how he’s been teaching us. We get individual work with him so we can refine our technique.”
“When Zach came out for track as a junior, I knew hurdles would be a good event for him, because there are so many technical aspects to work on, and I had seen him relentlessly practice football drills on his own for the two years prior,” said Brunton. “I knew he was going to absorb instruction and obsess over every detail to improve. That has been his super power – his unending work ethic.”
With the encouragement of Coach Brunton, Lucas will run track next year at Geneva College. Though he is excited for the next chapter, Lucas wants to end his senior season on a high note.
“I was two seconds shy of WPIALS last year for my 300 because that was the only event I ended up doing towards the end of the season,” Lucas said. “Now that I know I have the speed to do it, I just have to get the mindset right to just run it. It’ll be the first time for me going to an Individual WPIALs rather than just a Team WPIALS.”
