Two years in, Cartwright is national javelin champion
BILL POEHLER
Statesman Journal
April 15, 2008
Many athletes try throwing the javelin.
They can work hard at perfecting every step and arm movement for years and yet never excel at the event.
Occasionally you stumble across an Alex Cartwright.
Still a relative newcomer to the event — now a junior at Sprague High School, he started throwing it as a freshman — Cartwright is a national champion and is the top thrower in Oregon a little more than two years after first picking up the implement.
"Obviously you can see he's got a great athletic build," Sprague co-head coach and throws coach Les Charles said. "There's a thing in the javelin that I call the live arm. If you don't have it, it doesn't matter how hard you work, the guy that has one will probably beat you because they've got a little bit of that God-given arm there."
Cartwright got his start in the event at Sprague, but about a year ago he started working with Soren Sorensen, Willamette University's throws coach.
Sorensen was able to impart his knowledge about the technical aspects of the event and Cartwright soaked it up.
Pretty soon, Cartwright's improvement was not in inches like many high schoolers but in feet.
"I spent a lot of time in the summer at Willamette with coach Soren and we worked a lot," Cartwright said. "I think it was the fact that high school track season is so short that I was finally getting it there at the end and I was starting to throw the bigger throws.
"I was throwing like 175 in practice and just keep doing it, keep the repetition going and it finally just hit."
Cartwright had a solid sophomore season in track and field.
He threw a new personal record at 169 feet, five inches at the Central Valley Conference district meet to place second to McNary's Skyler Meeks.
A week later, he placed 10th at the Class 6A state meet giving him a season most would be proud of.
"I was disappointed with my high school season," he said. "I knew I was almost there, I was about to get it and I just wanted to get it in like the district meet and get that district championship."
It drove him to continue his work with Sorensen and the Salem Track Club well beyond the high school season and into the summer.
Cartwright learned how to use his legs in his throwing.
"He throws in events that are highly technical and his technique was not really that good," Sorensen said. "He has the genetic arm, which is the No. 1 thing to a great javelin thrower. He needed to throw from the ground up and not just his arm."
"He actually is as close to a genetic thrower as you can get."
Everything started coming together after that.
In the state Junior Olympic meet at McCulloch Stadium at Bush's Pasture Park in June, he threw a personal record of 170 feet, 10 inches.
A few weeks later, at the regional Junior Olympic meet in Kent, Wash., he won the event with a big personal record by throwing 194-9 3/4.
A couple weeks after that at the national Junior Olympic meet in Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, Calif., Cartwright set his third personal record in as many meets and set the meet record by eight feet with a mark of 200 feet even to win the national championship.
"It was kind of surreal," Cartwright said. "There was a lot of good competitors there. Nobody knew who I was when I first got there. It felt good to get that big throw right in the beginning. It was my second throw. It was really fun."
The potential was always there, it was just a matter of Cartwright putting in the extra time and work to reach his potential.
"He did a lot," Charles said. "He weight trains a lot. He works with Soren a lot. And he worked hard. Nobody earned it any more than him. He has a gift. He also developed that gift."
Cartwright kicked off for Sprague's football team last fall and Sorensen loves how football carries over to track and field with Cartwright.
"A kid who plays football and gets banged around in August, September, October, when the meets on the line, they tend to get after it a little more," Sorensen said. "He is very competitive. He hates to lose. It is a joy to coach him because he will do anything you tell him."
In his first track meet this spring, back on March 12 at Jesuit, Cartwright threw 194-2 as if to prove his big throws of last summer weren't flukes.
Sprague's track doesn't have a runway because of the remodeling that took place last summer that put in a FieldTurf football field.
Cartwright does much of his practice in the event at McCulloch with Sorensen.
He also lifts weights with Sorensen and other Sprague athletes three nights per week and that weight lifting has helped him improve in the discus — his personal record is 131-6. He took up shot put this spring and has thrown more than 45 feet.
But it is the javelin in which his future lies.
Cartwright's 200 foot throw last summer has drawn plenty of attention from colleges. He made an unofficial visit to Boise State in the spring with West Salem's Chase Sexton — who later signed to the college — and is entertaining other interest.
He is fortunate that Oregon is one of 18 states that offer javelin in high school even though the majority of college programs need javelin throwers.
"The first thing and honestly one of the reasons I offered to work with him is he has that genetic ability to go far," Sorensen said. "It's really, really hard to get a track scholarship for being a javelin thrower.
"He has been thinking about the next level. He needs to continue thinking about the next level."
Cartwright's interest in the event grew out of curiosity.
As an eighth-grader at Judson Middle School when he came to a Sprague High School track and field practice.
He saw some of the athletes throwing the javelin and thought it might be a good event to try.
"I really always wanted to try it," he said. "It just seemed like a cool thing to do."
Charles, then an assistant coach and throws coach, could see the potential, but he didn't have to look hard.
"He is an athlete," Charles said. "If you're going to describe an athlete, Alex Cartwright would be a good guy to start with. Sexton is a good guy to start with, (Tony) Gonzalez is a good guy to start with.
"They're a little bit different, but you don't have to look very hard to say there's an athlete."
bpoehler@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 399-6701
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