Javelin throwers ready to throw down in outdoor meet

Mom always said never play ball in the house. The same, one would expect, goes for the javelin. \nWell, someone can tell Mom the indoor season for track and field is over, as this weekend’s Stanford Invitational in Palo Alto, Calif., marks the beginning of outdoor meets.\nA new event added to the outdoor season is the javelin throw. Throwers coach Wil Fleming says the javelin throw, though popular, is a relatively misunderstood event.\n“A lot of people watch the javelin throw and assume that a football player could throw it really far,” Fleming said. “But the mechanics of the throw are different.”\nJavelin throwers begin their throws by sprinting down a runway, holding the javelin behind them, the tip slightly up. The sprinting provides the power to the throw, and holding the javelin back gives the thrower a longer release, allowing the most power to transfer to the javelin. \n“The whole goal of the run is to be in a good position to transfer your speed into the throw,” freshman thrower MacKenzie Cutter said. “At the end of the run, you want to plant your left leg in what is called the block. This will stop your left side and speed up your right.”\nFleming also mentioned “the block” as being very important. He said planting the left leg straight and strong will create a fulcrum for the throw to move over.\n“As I throw, I like to pull down my left arm into me,” sophomore Chris Klakamp said. “The farther you bring down your left, the more you bring your right around.”\nFleming said this motion makes the throwing arm into what looks like a whip. All of the momentum from the run is planted and transferred through the arm to the javelin. \n“The hardest thing to do when you start,” Klakamp said, “is throwing through the point” – that is, not letting the javelin tip come out too high, because then the javelin becomes perpendicular to the ground and fights the wind, he said.\n“Wind can also be a problem, depending on where it is,” Klakamp said. “Obviously a tail wind is great, but you can really get it to go in a head wind, because it keeps the tip from sinking. They make javelins designed for different types of wind.”\nThe javelin throw is just one of many events added to outdoor meets. It is these events that men’s interim head coach Wayne Pate hopes will help his team.\n“The indoor Big Tens are focused primarily on mid-distance,” Pate said. “Outdoors strains out to more events, and since we are a more complete team, it could help us.”\nBoth Pate and women’s interim head coach Judy Wilson said their main goals for the outdoor season were for their teams to improve on their finishes at the indoor Big Ten championships.