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Home > Articles > High School Sports > Adam Burggraf gets over 'disappointment' of winning bronze medal
Adam Burggraf gets over 'disappointment' of winning bronze medal
Posted: June 6th, 2014 @ 7:45pm
By CLAUDE SCILLEY
MISSISSAUGA - It took a few minutes after his event concluded Friday morning for Adam Burggraf to compose himself.
It didn't take too long, however, for him to recognize exactly what he'd accomplished.
"I could have thrown further so it's frustrating," he said, a bronze medal hanging around his neck, "but to come this far, (to think of) all of the people you have to go through to get here, to get a medal is insane.
"Still, I'm a little disappointed."
Burggraf's performance in midget boys javelin early in the second day of the 65th Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations track and field championships produced the second medal won by a Kingston-area athlete, following silver by Hailey Wolfgram of Regiopolis Notre Dame Thursday night in junior girls shot put.
It was one of three medals won so far by members of the Tim Fawcett-Melody Torcolacci training group.
It came with a personal-best throw - 47.48 metres, 61 centimetres beyond his best attempt at the regional qualifying meet a week ago - but what stung a bit was the fact that he had been in second place since the second round, but dropped a spot when Marlow Carter of Holy Cross in Stratford threw 48.55 metres with his sixth and final attempt to vault from third over Burggraf to second.
Burggraf had one last throw, but it was a little less than three metres shy of reclaiming second place.
"I tried to go too fast and I lost the point and it went kind of sideways," he said.
Tyler Field of Port Perry won the gold medal with a second-round throw of 50.15 metres.
While Burggraf, undefeated in five meets coming into Friday's competition, allowed himself some satisfaction from achieving a personal best at the most important meet of the high school season, he said he believed he had something better in him.
"I've thrown better in practice and I really felt like I could have thrown further and placed higher," he said, "but that's sports. You don't win everything every time."
On a sunny day with temperatures in the low 20s and almost no breeze - conditions he described as "pretty much perfect," - Burggraf said it took a while to acclimate to the setting.
"It's different from all the other meets," he said. "You have to get marshalled in, and everyone throws really far, and they all have a run-up, and they're all really good athletes."
Rather than being a distraction, he said the competitive field became a source of inspiration. "It gave me a sense of 'I'm an athlete, too, I earned my spot here and I can do really well.'"
On his bronze-medal throw, "everything kind of clicked," Burggraf said, but in trying to improve his mechanics, things got away from him.
"My arm didn't go fast enough," he explained, "and I tried speeding everything up. That's when I started being not as consistent."
The medal was the first for a Bayridge athlete at an OFSAA meet since Michel Martin won bronze in the open boys wheelchair 1,500 metres in 2006. Since Dan Brandao's bronze (junior boys 400 metres) in 2001, the school has had only three athletics medals, including the gold won by the junior girls 400-metre relay team of Maggie Matheson, Heather McLellan, Emily Coleman and Renee McLellan in 2003.
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