Where: Burke Stadium
If something wasn’t quite right with his last put of the shot, Eli Zoucha knows what to fix before stepping out of the ring.
Many times he can tell Mark Lloyd, his coach with the West O Throws club, what went wrong before Lloyd gets a chance to provide consultation. Maybe Eli’s footwork wasn’t quite right, or he was a little slow gliding across the ring.
High school and college throwers struggle to develop that level of awareness. And yet Eli can do it at age 12.
“He’s always been able to make changes when we make suggestions,” Lloyd said. “Just recently he has developed the sense of feel. If he needs to drive up of the middle on his right leg, he can adjust and do that on the next throw.”
Combine that mental awareness with Eli’s genetic gifts — the solidly built Beadle Middle School seventh-grader is already a hair over 6 feet tall — and the shot is traveling farther than any other Nebraska Junior Olympian has ever thrown it.
With the Nebraska Association record for the Midget Boys (ages 11-12) already in his pocket, Eli will continue his pursuit of the USA Track and Field national shot put record at this weekend’s Nebraska Association Junior Olympics championship meet.
Saturday’s competition in the two-day meet will begin at 9 a.m. at Burke Stadium with more than 1,000 boys and girls in six age groups vying for berths in the July 8-11 Region 8 Junior Olympics in Indianola, Iowa. The top six finishers in each event are eligible to advance.
Eli will compete Sunday in both the shot and discus.
In a meet earlier this month at Omaha Benson, Eli bettered the association shot put record for the second time in as many meets this season with a throw of 49-7½. That throw is nearly six feet better than the previous association record of 43-10½ set by Jason Weber of Beatrice in 1982.
Eli’s season best in the discus, 107-9, puts him within shouting distance of the association record of 121-2.
Well within Eli’s reach is the Midget division national shot put record of 53-0 set in 1980 by Troy Fowler of Eureka, Kan. Lloyd said Eli has had 53- and 54-foot throws in practice.
The throwing landscape is littered with practice and warm-up warriors who enjoy crowing about their practice throws, but somehow they’re never able to duplicate those feats in a meet.
But Eli doesn’t talk about those throws. He knows unless he can blast one that far when the pressure’s on, people aren’t interested in what he did when no one else was around.
“I’ve been working six years with a really good coach showing me what to do,” Eli said. “I just have to get used to the meet atmosphere each time, have fun and make sure I have good form.”
In 2008, Eli won the National Junior Olympics at Burke Stadium with an association record throw of 34-11¾ in the Bantam (10-and-under) division.
Lloyd said that came during a time when Eli was more focused on distance than the technical aspects of his event.
“I had to educate Eli and his family to not look at distances but instead to concentrate on his form,” Lloyd said. “I told them that if he’s in the right position when he throws it, it will go. If he’s not, it wouldn’t go as far as it was capable of going.”
Eli admitted he was too focused on performance instead of potential at that age. And he said he was overconfident going into the ’08 national meet because he had a much higher ranking than anyone else in the field.
“I thought I could just walk in, throw the shot and win it,” Eli said. “That taught me to not underestimate your competition. No matter how far you are ahead in the rankings, it comes down to the competition.”
Contact the writer:
444-1201, alexsdad@mail.com
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