Benefield: Middletown's Bryson Trask buries Empire discus record at state meet

CLOVIS — Ronald Reagan was president. Olivia Newton John's 'Physical' was the top song in the land. And Superman was wrestling between his love for Lois Lane and his need to save the world from General Zod and his thugs in the box-office hit 'Superman II.' The year? 1981. That was the year Chris Day of Montgomery High threw the discus 181 feet, 6.25 inches. No high schooler in the Redwood Empire has thrown the discus farther in 38 years.

Until Friday.

Middletown High senior Bryson Trask pulled off a bomb, hurling a throw of 181 feet, 10 inches to finish in third place in the preliminaries at the CIF state track and field championships at Buchanan High School in Clovis. The finish landed him in the finals Saturday, and he promptly followed the feat with a qualifying session in the shot put, giving himself a chance to make the podium in two events.

His previous best in the discus had been a 176-3 throw back in February.

'I actually thought it was a subpar throw,' he said of his record breaker. 'I didn't think it was that good. Even watching it land, I didn't think it was that amazing, but hearing the '181,' it put a smile on my face.

'I've been working all season for this,' he said. 'It's been a really rough season for me. But I finally put everything together, the physical aspect, the mental aspect, and I was able to come out with a PR and the Redwood Empire record.

'I'm super happy,' he said. 'I'm coming into (Saturday) on cloud nine, third place — I couldn't believe it. And I'm ready to throw a bigger one.'

In order to do so, he's going to do a couple of things differently Saturday.

Doubling here is a trick. Ask Maria Carrillo junior Zavier Rodrigues who high-jumped all afternoon, tying his personal record, then moved on to his 110-meter hurdle warmup.

But he had to interrupt his warmup to go back across the massive complex and compete in a jump-off in high jump. Gassed, he didn't make the cut in either.

So it's a bit of a puzzle trying to navigate two events at one of the biggest high school meets in the nation. It got to Trask in a way that had physical effects — he didn't eat.

'I ended up skipping lunch,' he said. And he didn't feel it in the discus, but in shot put, which has a different feel for Trask, he paid a price.

'I try to keep very calm for discus. I try to stay cool and collected and let the throws just happen,' he said.

Shot put, he said, demands something different.

'I normally like to ramp it up another gear for shot put,' he said. 'But it just didn't happen today. I was really flat. I didn't have a whole lot of energy.'

'I was just super flat after throwing the discus,' he said.

So after a day of throwing, I asked him what he was going to eat Friday night, both to fill the tank and ready himself for another day of throws Saturday.

'A lot,' he said. 'I don't know what it's going to be, but it's going to be a lot.'

After the triumph Friday, he's got to regroup. That monster throw that set the local record? He starts from scratch in the finals.

Still, I asked Trask if the goal coming into Saturday is to win the discus.

He paused.

'Geez,' he said. 'It's not the goal … for me, it's just to have fun. If I win, I win. If I don't, I don't.'

And he acknowledged the quality of the competition up and down the rosters in both events. Trask set his own PR in discus, but the winner of the prelims, Gino Cruz of Newbury Park, tossed the discus 195 feet. In shot put, the winner went 68 feet, 1.75 inches.

And the winner, Daniel Vivercs, tossed that just after the public address announcer introduced him to the thousands of people in the stands. It went quiet and he launched it. Then came the ooohs and ahhhs.

And after that came Trask. I asked him what that was like — following the nation's best with thousands watching.

'It sucked,' he said. But he was laughing.

'It was like, 'Wow, let's watch this guy throw 68 feet and the next guy throw 55,'' he said. 'But oh well. I made it to tomorrow.'

And tomorrow, he'll again go against some of the biggest names in the business.

'The atmosphere is pretty humbling, actually,' he said. 'A lot of the guys that I'm throwing with now I've been following the past couple of years. I don't have, like, personal connections with them, but I know them.'

But after Friday, Trask is the biggest name in the business in the Redwood Empire. He put his name atop a record that had stood for nearly four decades. And he did it while advancing to the state finals in two events.

Not a bad day at the office.

You can reach staff columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 and at kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com, on Twitter @benefield and Instagram @kerry.benefield. Podcasting on iTunes and SoundCloud, 'Overtime with Kerry Benefield.'