ALLEGANY, N.Y. — After the year she had, you wouldn’t blame Angelina Napoleon for wanting to take a break.
After winning two individual state championships in outdoor track and field — following titles in cross country and indoor track — she wasn’t quite done. No, the Allegany-Limestone junior had one more meet to impress in.
Last weekend, Napoleon traveled to Philadelphia for the New Balance Nationals Outdoor meet, where she won the steeplechase, took second in the 800-meter run and 13th in high jump.
Winning on a national stage capped an unbelievable year where Napoleon put herself in rarified air.
“It definitely feels a little surreal,” she said of her 2021-22 athletic season. “I always feel like I’m on to the next thing, so it’s been hard to let it really sink in. But I’m kind of just taking a step back and looking at the year, I just feel really good about what I accomplished this year.”
IT WON’T be long until she starts planning to do it all again in the fall.
“Right now I’m taking a little bit of a break and then I’ll probably already start getting ready for cross country,” Napoleon said. “So I’m just preparing for that.”
Napoleon began a hat trick of state championship seasons in the fall, when she took the NYSPHSAA cross country title. She won the five-kilometer race by nearly 23 seconds to claim the Class C crown at 18:37.7.
In the winter, she won the 1,000-meter race at the NYSPHSAA indoor track and field championship with a time of 2:49.65.
But she topped even herself in the spring, winning twice at the NYSPHSAA outdoor track championships in Cicero-North Syracuse. Napoleon won the 800-meter championship, between both Division I and Division II (large and small schools), by more than two seconds at 2:08.58. A day later, her 2,000-meter steeplechase run time of 6:30.59 not only gave her a combined state championship but a meet record. She was also eighth in the state (fourth in Division II) in the high jump.
The NYSPHSAA did not hold championships in the spring of 2020 and all of 2020-21. So when did the idea of state championships in all three seasons cross Napoleon’s mind?
“Definitely after cross country,” she said. “I had talked about it with my dad during cross country, because it did seem unrealistic just because there’s so many girls, it’s really crazy, how could it be just you that could be state champion? But once I made it happen in cross country, it definitely was top priority in indoor and outdoor.”
A-L cross country and girls track coach Kathy Stamets started to believe it could happen then as well.
“I knew it was realistic to think she would make states in cross country, and that’s where the year starts,” Stamets said. “So she says, you kind of do one at a time, so I wasn’t really thinking necessarily at the beginning of the year (all the way) to track. I was just kind of thinking about cross country and she definitely, I knew, had the potential. Last year … she would have qualified. She had been seventh the last time she actually went to states. So I knew she was in the mix, and just seeing the improvement, we started off the cross country season a little rocky and it took us a little while to get on point of where we needed to go, but as soon as we did, I knew we were headed to a really good place.”
RUNNING, of course, can be grueling. Especially in the kinds of events Napoleon excels in. But she said actually she likes running.
“It just is a big stress reliever for me,” she said.
So she’s focused on running sports all through high school.
“I’ve always been kind of a runner,” she said. “When I was little I would just always run around the yard. I played like everybody plays your recreational soccer, basketball, but I really always ran events with my dad and my mom (Chris and Melanie) and it really just came up when I was in seventh grade, I just started cross country and after that it’s just been history.”
The biggest ‘wow’ of the season came a week before the outdoor state meet. That’s when Napoleon broke a national record — for high schoolers and U.S. girls under age 20 — in the 2000 steeplechase with a time of 6:24.32, blowing away her goals from mere months ago.
“Earlier in the year, things surprised me, but now it doesn’t,” Stamets said. “When we were at sectionals and she broke that national record, that opened the world. At that point, there was no restriction. Before, you kind of look at ‘she’s achieving this, she’s achieving that,’ but when she hit that level of success it was kind of like ‘wow, there are no limits here.’ So really looking at the fact that who knows where she can go?”
NAPOLEON said the mark was on her radar entering the Section 6 state qualifier.
“It was honestly crazy because I was so close to the record, I had only beaten it by a second, so just getting that time,” she said. “At the beginning of the year, I was going for a 6:55 and then jumping all the way down to a 6:24 is mind-blowing.”
She credited “a lot of “ endurance work to cut time down over the course of the season.
“(You have to) really get your body prepared for the distance you’re about to run and then really once you have that down, it’s a lot about speed and making sure you’re as clean as possible over the steeple,” Napoleon said. “I think that’s what really helped me this year, I focused a lot on hurdles and just really getting over the barriers smoothly.”
The A-L coaches knew they could put Napoleon in virtually any event at dual meets this year and expect four victories. Napoleon said she really enjoys all the events, but given her success, would pick the steeplechase as her favorite.
As she rests and prepares for the fall, Napoleon will also begin making college visits to consider where she might continue her athletic career. She’s considering sports management or teaching as potential career paths but remains undecided.
With one year left in high school, Napoleon wants to go out and do it all again as a senior.
“It’s really crazy to think that I have to re-do this year, almost,” she said. “It’s like I feel like I know the amount of work I put in this year and just really taking it season by season because when you look at the whole year it can definitely be a lot. Starting with cross country, I’m just going to start from square one and work my way up. Those goals are definitely (to) repeat the ones I did this year.”
(Sam Wilson, Times Herald sports writer and Salamanca Press sports editor, may be contacted at swilson@oleantimesherald.com)
