By Kim J. Harmon

Janelle Tracy can sure pack a lot of success into just a few seconds.

Through four years of indoor and outdoor track at Newtown High School, Janelle has put together an absolutely amazing record of accomplishment . . . which is, 13 – count ‘em, THIRTEEN – individual South-West Conference championships in the 55- and 300-meter dashes (indoors), and the 100- and 200-meter dashes (outdoors).

Amazing.

She won all four of those events in the 1999-2000 school year and – adding in her anchor work on the SWC outdoor champion 4x100 and 4x400 relay teams – was an easy choice as the first-ever Newtown Bee Newtown High School Athlete of the Year.

“I don’t think the idea (of all those conference championships) has sunk in,” said Janelle. “I kind of laugh about it a little.”

Getting Started

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how Janelle got involved in track to begin with . . . not when you consider that her father, Donald, was a sprinter for the Division I Penn State Nittany Lions some years ago.

“That was the biggest influence,” Janelle admitted. “But I think because of my personality, I enjoy individual sports more – if you get beat, then you get beat. It’s up to you to get it done.”

While dad – and the influence of genetics, no doubt – had Janelle leaning towards track, as a kid she still played all the other sports kids in this town play. It wasn’t until eighth grade, at the Newtown Middle School, where Janelle – with her brothers, Ryan and Marcus – began competing in the Parks and Recreation track and field events.

While Ryan (heading into his sophomore year at Newtown High) and Marcus have become accomplished soccer players, Janelle has made track a lifetime commitment. She will be heading on to James Madison University in August to become what should be an accomplished collegiate sprinting career.

That idea is based on the fact that Janelle made a splash in high school track almost from the get go. Indoor, she won the 55-meter dash and finished second in the 300-meter dash and, outdoor, she ran 12.5 seconds in the 100-meter dash in the first meet of the season, a time which was .8 seconds faster than the time that won the event at the conference meet the previous year.

Of course Janelle won the 100-meter dash at the SWC meet . . . and did so for the next three years. She came in third in the 200-meter dash as a freshman, then won the event the next three years running.

Consistency in the outdoor season was a trademark, too, as Janelle started with a 12.5 in the 100 meters, dipped to a personal record of 12.3 as a sophomore, and then hovered around 12.6, 12.7 and 12.8 as a junior and senior.

“As I got older, the time became a little less of a priority,” said Janelle, “but my goal is always to go out and set my personal record.”

The difference between running a 12.3 and a 12.8 might measure out to just a half-second and to those with a fair grasp of time and space realize that a half-second is about the same time it takes you to blink once.

But on the track, a half-second is a lot.

“Especially when you go to states,” said Janelle, “.5 seconds can be the difference between first- and 16th-place. When I ran my 12.3 (at states), I ran in a heat with a girl who was an 11. Those are the people I look up to. It’s amazing.”

Dropping .5 seconds may just be a simple matter of training – if putting in long hours of practice, toying with the explosion off the blocks or the stride or the movement of the upper body can be called simple – but it isn’t so simple trying to explain what type of person one has to be to do this sort of thing.

“It takes someone with a lot of determination,” said Janelle, “someone is very competitive and who loves to run. You have to have a passion for running and you really have to want to succeed.”

That kind of passion, no doubt, was always a part of her personality. Stuff like that can’t be learned. But for those times when she might have needed a little boost, a little help, she always had someone standing in her corner.

“My dad was always there to pat me on the back,” said Janelle, “and was always there to push me.”

And when it didn’t come from her father, it came from her best friend, Shannon Elf, now at Bowdoin College in Maine.

“We always talk about our first memories,” said Janelle, “doing blocks when I was a freshman. Ever since then we have helped each other, pushed each other. She’s done it and she knows what I’m going through.”

But Janelle was not always a solitary warrior on the field of battle. When she wasn’t sprinting – or even dabbling in the javelin, like she did this year – she was also the anchor on the 4x100 and 4x400 relay teams and that was a whole ‘nother thing.

“So much work goes into that,” said Janelle, who helped the 4x100 relay team win an outdoor conference championship the last two years. “Even though (track) is an individual sport, when some sort of team effort goes into it, there is a lot of satisfaction.”

And she will always remember the 1999 SWC outdoor meet, standing at the finish line with all of her teammates wishing – wishing hard – that somehow, as the results were being tallied, they were able to win their second conference championship in a row.

Yes, it was an amazing career – earning 13 individual conference champions, sharing several more relay championships, and helping her indoor and outdoor teams win a total of five conference championships.

Now it’s on to college.