Notre Dame’s Seykora gets on track

During the girls' mile run championship at the Penn Relays, Maria Seykora showed how much she has matured.

As a younger runner, Seykora, a junior at Notre Dame Academy, used to have a sort of complex: She always wanted to run ahead of the pack. She had to lead, always.

So at this year's carnival, in a race that she was seeded last going in, she hung back. She bided her time early, inched up in the middle laps, and at the final quarter mile, took off.

"It opened up with a lap to go and I went for it," Seykora said. "I went all-out."

"She just, basically, exploded on the straightaway going into the fourth lap," head coach Laura Heilman added.

Seykora finished fifth with a personal-best time of 4 minutes, 53.89 seconds. It is the second-fastest time in Pennsylvania this season, behind only the event's winner at the Relays (4:48.83 by Angel Piccirillo of Homer City, Pa.).

For Seykora, it's just one achievement in a laundry list of highlights this year, but also one that best exhibits her growth.

"She went in there being strategic about how she wanted to run it," Heilman said. "I know she really thought it out."

This past weekend, she won the 1,600 and the 3,200 meters at the Delco Championships at Upper Darby. Her winning time of 10:49.67 in the 3,200 broke the meet record by nearly 10 seconds and was five ticks ahead of second place. It's her third consecutive Delco title in the 1,600 and second straight in the 3,200.

Heilman thinks her star pupil can eventually eclipse the 4:50 benchmark in the mile, which would place Seykora among the top 10 high school runners nationally in the event. Her mark at the Penn Relays ranked 16th in the country this season. It may be in June at the New Balance Outdoor Nationals where that time comes.

"I think she's studied the sport over the last three years," Heilman said.

And she has a year of high school remaining.

"This is my best season in my whole running career," Seykora said, "and I've been running since fourth grade."

Running late. No one in Pennsylvania has run the 200- and 400-meter dashes faster than Cheltenham's Matt Gilmore this season.

Gilmore's times of 21.84 seconds (in the 200) and 48.75 (in the 400) are tops in each event, respectively, according to MileSplit.us. But for Gilmore, a senior, they're a bit slow.

When he strained his right hamstring in early February, with the indoor season hitting its stretch run, Gilmore took a step back. The injury derailed his training for several weeks and his times took a hit.

"We're trying to get him to run faster because he's way behind schedule - even though he's winning," Cheltenham head coach Bob Beale said.

After signing his national letter of intent to run at Penn State on Wednesday, Gilmore said he hopes to shave each time considerably - the 200 to the low 21s and the 400 into the mid 46s. He is just 85 percent healthy, he said.

As a junior, Gilmore was the state's Class AAA runner-up in the 400, exactly 1 second off Brady Gehret's winning pace. (Gehret, of Altoona, now runs at Penn State.)

"I was No. 2 behind only [Gehret]; with him graduating you would think I'd have the forefront," Gilmore said. "But I've had to work really hard, with the injuries it's been really annoying, but it's taught me a lot about things I have to work on besides running."

Gilmore is now increasing his workload, running in three or four events per meet, rather than just two. The District 1 championships begin May 19 and are followed by the PIAA championships a week later.

"I have to run myself into shape," Gilmore said. "It doesn't really matter how my legs feel."