Salute To Seniors is a medium for "senior farewells". We invited the 2020 seniors to tell their stories from the past four years. With the loss of the spring season we hope we can offer a chance to reflect on all the great moments this class did get to experience. Thank you to everyone who submitted, we are closing up the series and still have a few in queue to be posted.
Oliver Misra
Tenafly HS
What was your most memorable race?
For me it was the NJSIAA Group Championship Group 3 race for the 3200m indoors of my senior year. Personally this meant something to me, last year at sectionals in the 3200m indoors they miscounted the laps and everything got messed up. This felt like redemption and I qualified for groups by coming 5th in sectionals (Unfortunately they didn't give out medals to 4th, 5th, and 6th place for sectionals this year).
Who would you consider your biggest competition over the past four years?
It has to be my teammate Carmel Ohring but in a good way. Carmel was my training buddy and he always pushed me in practice, always pushing to stay with him was something I was constantly doing. Shoutout to Jin Woo Song and Tom Carney as well since they have always been pushing me when we race.
If you were writing a letter to your freshmen self, what are some items that would include?
I would tell myself to not stress out about running fast my freshman year, times will come, dwelling on something like that prevents you from running YOUR race.
What were the most difficult obstacles you had to overcome?
For me it was having a stress fracture in the spring of my sophomore year and I couldn't run for three months and this was from over-training. I ran worse than my freshman year and I was putting in more work, it was frustrating and then getting injured felt like a final blow. However I had the whole summer to get in shape to set a mark to get a lot faster my junior and senior year.
What will you miss the most?
I will definitely miss the whole experience and it was such a shame that the spring season was cancelled and I hope the Class of 2020 can have some sort of payback for a season being taken from us, and senior year of spring track is the most important season for many. I will also miss getting in a good 1600m race as none of them ever went right and I feel that I could have run way faster at that if I really had a go at it.
What influence has your coach had with respect to your performance and overall life goals?
My coach has written every workout I have done and I really appreciate it, the effort and enthusiasm was always there from them. From helping me run 10 flat in the 3200m (and possibly sub 10 if we had an outdoor season) and helping me get to groups individually for cross country my senior year.
Name the top New Jersey XCTF moment(s) you have witnessed.
It would have to be my teammate Carmel Ohring winning the NJSIAA Sectionals North I Group 3 individually for cross country our junior year. We also came 2nd as a team to all qualify to Groups at Holmdel.
Who would you like to say 'thank you' to?
I would like to say thank you to Coach Burns for being my cross country coach, Coach Bianchi for being my track coach, and my family for being supportive along the way.