During their senior year, a pair of recent Mattituck High School graduates traded in their first-period study hall for an independent project. Their goal: engineering a prosthetic hand equipped with artificial muscle. READ
Tag: Jack Dufton
It all ended for Jack Dufton with a Coke and a smile.
Following the New York State Public High School Athletic Association track and field championships last year when he finished 23rd in the pentathlon, Dufton resolved to cut out bad foods from his diet and abstained from drinking soda. “I wanted to come back bigger, stronger, healthier,” said the Mattituck High School senior.
And he did. The results spoke for themselves.
Jack Dufton has never met Keith Reda, but he’s been chasing after him for three years. On Saturday, Dufton passed by him.
Dufton broke a Mattituck High School pentathlon record that had been on the books and owned by Reda for 26 years. By winning the 1,500-meter run, the final phase of the pentathlon in the Section XI Individual Championships/state qualifier, with a time of 4 minutes 23.50 seconds, Dufton totaled 3,017 points. That left him in second place behind West Islip junior Andrew Lauriquet (3,140), but surpassed the mark of 2,933 that Reda set in 1990. READ
Keith Reda’s record is safe — at least for now.
Mattituck High School senior Jack Dufton was approaching the school pentathlon record of 2,933 points that Reda set in 1990.
Jack Dufton is quite a good high jumper in his own right, and yet the Mattituck High School senior said he doesn’t believe he has won a high jump competition since he entered seventh grade. Of course, there is a good reason for that.
High school winter track is a different animal than the spring version in a number of ways. That includes the makeup of the Section XI Championships. READ
By Karl Himmelmann’s count, there are only about a handful of high schools in Suffolk County that do not run winter track. Mattituck is no longer one of them. READ
The Section XI Division Championships are about serious competition on a serious cross-country course.
Mattituck junior Jack Dufton runs the 110-meter hurdles Friday in the pentathlon. (Credit: Robert O’Rourk)
Jack Dufton knows he has little room for error. To accomplish his goal, the Mattituck junior needs to hit every mark and run every time to the best of his ability.
At the Section XI Individual Championships and State Qualifier, Dufton earned a spot at next weekend’s state championship by finishing as the top point scorer among Division II athletes in the pentathlon. (more…)
Jack Dufton set a Mattituck High School record in the 800 meters and has set his sights on the school’s pentathlon record. (Credit: Katharine Schroeder, file)
After he flew through the first 400 meters of the 800-meter race in 57 seconds, one had to wonder, could this be the day? Could this be the day that Jack Dufton does it?
Dufton himself said he had gone into the race “feeling slow.” If the Mattituck High School junior was going to have a record-setting day, May 12 didn’t seem like it would be the day.
But Dufton said about 200 meters into the race, all of his reservations blew away like the wind off his shoulders and he started feeling good. As he rounded the final turn, a school record was on the line. (more…)