Competing successfully in hurdles
takes a perfect blend of nearly everything track and field is about.
Running. Jumping. Timing. All mixed at a blazingly fast pace to the
finish line.
Bear Lake’s Yumi Babinec has proved over the course of her prep
career that she has a natural knack for each of these technical
components while running for Onekama’s co-op track program. But this
season — her senior year — she’s fused a new element to the formula.
“For Yumi, it’s just confidence,” Onekama girls track coach Bonnie
Brown said. “She just realized she could give more and she did. I
think it just goes to show what she can do when she sets her mind to
something. If you put your heart into it great things can happen.
And she’s put her heart and soul into this.” Running, Jumping.
Timing. Confidence. The equation has made Babinec a two-time school
record holder in both the 100 and 300 meter hurdles this season. And
she's already got her mind set on new heights.
ON A WHIM
Babinec’s road to each record couldn’t have been any more different.
The senior’s history with the 300-meter hurdles has been brief,
while she’s been an avid 100-meter hurdler since seventh grade. Her
track coaches inserted her in the former event earlier this season,
simply on a whim.
“I honestly hadn’t run the 300 since I did a little my sophomore
year,” said Babinec. “One meet earlier this year I was like ‘Hmm
maybe I’ll try,’ and my very first heat I was two seconds away from
the record.”
That was back on April 12 in Onekama’s dual meet against Lake City.
It took Babinec less than a month and four meets later to etch her
name next to the event in the Onekama school record books,
shattering a 26-year-old mark.
“My coaches were like ‘Why did
you not do this last year?’” she said with a laugh. “Since then, I
was like ‘OK, I guess this will be my race for the rest of the
year.’ And from then it was just about going all out.”
Babinec went all out at the Bobcat Invitational in Brethren on May
7, finishing the race in 47.98 which shattered Aimee Fink’s 50 flat
which was set in 1985.
“She smoked it,” Brown said. “We put her in the 300 (at Lake City),
and told her just to cruise, then she almost broke the record just
cruising.
“The thing about Yumi is she’s very coachable,” she added. “She’s a
great 400-meter person, and if you’re great at that, you can
definitely run 300 hurdles. After she saw she could, we all kind of
honed in on improving her time. And I think it’s really been all in
her head and her heart.”
NEW MARK ... AND BEYOND
The 100-meter hurdles has been Babinec’s premier event. In it, she
qualified for the Division 4 state finals for the first time last
season with a fifth-place finish in her team’s regional.
