{"id":3344,"date":"2013-07-31T09:49:25","date_gmt":"2013-07-31T13:49:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=3344"},"modified":"2013-08-14T14:51:56","modified_gmt":"2013-08-14T18:51:56","slug":"joey-stel-qualifies-for-track-nationals-in-bc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/joey-stel-qualifies-for-track-nationals-in-bc\/","title":{"rendered":"Joey Stel qualifies for track nationals in BC"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jeff Doner<\/strong><\/p>\n

Aurora runner Joey Stel has taken another big stride forward in realizing his goals for the summer. <\/p>\n

The 16-year old recently added to a successful summer by \u201ccrushing\u201d his personal bests in both the 1.5K and 3K races to qualify for track nationals in Langley, BC later this summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything just lined up. In the past it seemed like it would be a really hot day, I had already raced that day or the day before or I would just flat out screw up one lap, this time I didn\u2019t,\u201d he said about his most recent 1.5K race at York University.<\/p>\n

\u201cI crushed my time. I was sitting at 4:11 for most of the year and it\u2019s not that I didn\u2019t have the best circumstances to run really good times, it was just I didn\u2019t think it would end up getting a 4:06.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shortly after beating his 1.5K personal best by five seconds, he went on to do the exact same thing in the 3K, trimming a 9:06:04 personal best down to a 9:01.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really didn\u2019t think I had it in me there, to be honest,\u201d he admitted. \u201cI\u2019ve never really had a better weekend of racing for me before.\u201d
\nBut this time around, Stel said everything just seemed to come together for him.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor once it was not hot. A cold front came in after the rain and I think it was about 22 degrees and that felt awesome. Since it was a championship meet, the circumstances were just really good. There was a guy in front of me on my team and basically I just tried to stick with him and I knew that would get me a solid time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stel is a member of the Newmarket Huskies cross country running team and said that it feels great to be finally achieving some of his goals for the summer. The big goal there was qualifying for nationals in Langley, BC on Aug. 8.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the goal for me pretty much every year. Now I\u2019ve made it and the goal becomes trying to do well there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Although thrilled with the outcome, he said achieving a qualifying time came a little later than he had originally hoped.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s actually later than expected, but what was really at the front of my mind was that I only had two races left to qualify for nationals and if I screwed up there I would have only had one shot left,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow it really doesn\u2019t matter when I got it, just that I got it and it feels amazing. It\u2019s actually quite relieving because last year I was off by 0.7 of a second, so it\u2019s been a long time and I\u2019ve never made it to track nationals.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aurora runner Joey Stel has taken another big stride forward in realizing his goals for the summer. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-RW","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-10 07:08:30","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3344\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}