Tough-luck Cogs battling through

April 15, 2011

Genoa-Kingston High School


Genoa Kingston coach Phil Jerbi can't remember anything like it in his career.
Jerbi thought senior distance runner Dan Dillett had the flu a few weeks ago, but the Cogs' top 800-meter runner just wasn't getting any better.
Hospitalized late last week, Jerbi found out that Dillett, a trombone player in the school band, likely will miss the rest of the season with brass poisoning. Jerbi said Dillett is back at school.
The bad luck for the Cogs didn't stop there.
Another senior, hurdler and distance runner Peter Hull, caught himself on a hurdle in Saturday's Oregon Relays and broke the ball off of his radius bone in his elbow and is out for the year.
Jeff Callahan, a junior who hurdles and is on the 4x400 team, broke the growth plate on the top of his hip before the season. They don't know how or when the injury occurred.
Through all of the bad luck, Jerbi likes the way his team has responded.
"It's been a rough year, we've had a lot of negative things happen to us, and our team has had to persevere," Jerbi said. "A lot of teams would have ... gone through the motions to kind of get through the year and say, ‘Well, we could've had a good run but now there's no way.' Instead, I've seen this group come together and jell over the last week."
He'll have to make 12 scratches or replacements in today's Seneca Invite.
Filling Dillett's void has been particularly tough, so Jerbi decided to have a tryout on Wednesday.
"I said, ‘Whoever is warmed up, whoever's ready, get on the track and we're going to run. ... Anybody that is interested in filling a varsity spot,' " he said.
The response, Jerbi said, was outstanding. Thirteen throwers, sprinters and jumpers lined up to try to fill the void, half of whom never had run an 800 before. He gave the athletes another chance Thursday and said he'll announce the winner of the tryout today, when he hopes his team's luck turns around.
"We've got a lot of positive people," Jerbi said. "We just hope good karma can find its way to Genoa."