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Insight To The Shot
Created: 2/21/2006 7:46:55 AM
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By Bruce Wood, Big Green Alert
Maybe when you think of the shot put you think of a big galoot heaving a hunk of metal as far as he can between chomps on a meatloaf sandwich.
Not exactly rocket science, huh?
If that’s what you think, think again. In fact, think about Rob Kerris.
A junior captain of the Dartmouth men’s track team, Kerris looks more like the accomplished scuba diver he is than an accomplished weight man at an even 6 feet and an almost-svelte 217 pounds.
A galoot? Hardly. Kerris is an Academic All-Ivy League selection who might want to pursue a career as a trauma doctor after medical school.
Not exactly rocket science? Listen to Kerris analyze his struggles this indoor season as he tries to regain the form that helped him finish third in the shot and third in the discus at the Outdoor Heptagonal Championships last spring.
“People who aren’t throwers don’t understand the fact that to throw far you have to be really loose,” said Kerris. “You don’t want to be uptight and you don’t want to try to muscle it, which seems counterintuitive when you are trying to throw something really heavy.
“You want to try and throw with stretch reflex and you want to be quick. The only way to be quick is to be relaxed. That’s the fun and it’s the frustration.”
To be sure, there’s been more fun than frustration so far for Kerris, a high school football-track standout in rural Pennsylvania. Although he captained the Southern Columbia Area football team to a 13-2 record and a state championship as a senior center and defensive end in 2002 (making third team All-State), he opted to concentrate on track and field as a collegian.
“I had an injury in my senior year where I tore some ligaments in my left knee,” Kerris explained. “I thought track would be easier on my knee and a better choice overall.
“I told my football coach, who usually takes care of our recruiting, that I was going to try to go for track and field, but I still had quite a few Division II schools recruit me for football and was recruited a bit by Penn.”
Kerris, who was chosen to the Pennsylvania Track and Field Coaches
Association All-State first team, made the initial contact with Dartmouth.
“I had pretty good SAT scores and grades and I knew I wanted to go to an Ivy League school,” he said. “I sent out recruiting information to a lot of Ivy League schools and Coach (Carl) Wallin was the first one to call me back.”
For as much as Wallin liked what he saw on paper, he’s big on character and wasn’t ready to commit to Kerris sight unseen.
“I always want to bring them up, see what they are like and if I'll like them,” the veteran coach said. “I liked him very much.
“He's well brought up. He's got a good work ethic. He had played football so there's some toughness. Even though he's not huge I figured he’s going to be really good.”
And really good he’s been.
Kerris won the shot in his first-ever Ivy League meet, throwing a then-personal best 50 feet, 3 1/4 inches in a triangular event with Yale and Columbia in January of his freshman year. He’s increased his PR in the shot to 54-5 1/4 inches and has logged 152 feet in the discus.
His future in the circle is as bright as it is out of it, although there remains the not-so-little matter of finding that elusive happy medium between pressing and relaxing.
“The two people ahead of me at Heps last year were seniors who graduated, so I kind of put a little bit of extra pressure on myself to try to throw it far at meets,” Kerris admitted. “It’s caused me to try to put too much force into how I throw, and when you do that you don’t really get the ‘rubber band’ effect that you need.”
Offered Wallin: “This is something you do for fun, and you don’t want to over think it. He just has to stop pressing. It's a very technical event and if he can master that, he can do amazing things.”
Amazing things like juggling a 16-pound shot while the weight of preparing for med school rests on his shoulders.
“Coach Wallin helped me realize if you want to do something you can do it, and to never feel sorry for yourself about how much work you have to do, or what needs to be done to accomplish your goal,” Kerris said. “It is kind of hard this term because I have MCATs in April on top of taking two fairly hard classes, immunology and physics.
“It is demanding, but it's achievable. It's another reason why I think it's good to do a sport in college. It teaches you how to focus and balance your time.”
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Related Schools: Dartmouth
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Related Sports: Indoor Track
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*This Article has been archived.*
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