Manhasset’s Park wins triple jump title

BY MICHAEL J. LEWIS

Imagine, for a moment, a champion surfer who doesn’t like water.

Or the world’s best geologist who isn’t that fond of rocks.

It doesn’t make much sense, right? How could you spend your life doing something, hour after hour, around something you don’t much care for?

Well, don’t ask Manhasset High School senior Paul Park, because for the past fve years he’s been dealing with a similar conundrum.

Park hates sand.Hates it. Doesn’t like going to the beach, because the sand gets everywhere and into everything. We’ve all been there and experienced that.

And yet, ever since eighth grade,

Park has spent thousands and thousands of hours mired in the grainy white stuf, because that’s what long jumpers and triple jumpers like him land on after soaring through the air like Carl Lewis or Michael Powell did decades before.

“I know it’s strange,” he said with a laugh. “I just really don’t like shaking my shoes out all the time after practice.”

Well, despite his loathing of sand, all those hours of practice have paid of big-time, culminating in a magical moment for Park on March 4 at the New York State Indoor Track and Field Championships, on Staten Island.

Soaring farther than he ever had, Park landed a triple jump of 46 feet, 11 inches to claim his frst state title. Im- proving his past personal best of 45-1, Park did it on his frst jump Saturday, and on an injured left heel he’d hurt the week before.

“I feel like the higher the stakes of the meet, the more adrenaline I had, so when I was doing that frst jump I wasn’t feeling any pain,” Park said. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw (how far) it was. I didn’t think it was anything that special, but then they put up the number and I was shocked, just shocked.”

After his record leap, Park and his coaches, Steve Steiner, Kevin Kearney and Justin Renna, had to wait for more than hour to see if Park’s mark would hold up and give him what’s believed to be Manhasset’s frst indoor track and feld state title since 1984.

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