She may be a freshman but Megan Ronan already has a flare for the dramatic.
Megan Ronan
Ronan — a Burlingame resident — helped make St. Ignatius history at last Friday’s Central Coast Section track and field championships at Gilroy High School. She was one of two St. Ignatius long jumpers to earn individual CCS titles. Senior Alex Enos claimed the boys’ long jump title for the Wildcats. In doing so, Ronan and Enos become the first athletes in school history to top the CCS podium in the long jump.
For Ronan, the championship came down to her last jump. She was sitting pretty after a jump of 18 feet earlier in the day. During the last rotation, however, Silver Creek junior Jazlynn Shearer surpassed her with a jump of 18 feet, 8 inches.
It was by no means an insurmountable distance for Ronan, who earlier in the season recorded a personal record of 19-6.5 at the CCS Top 8 Meet in Los Gatos. But the pressure was on for her to execute her best distance on a warm Gilroy evening while staring down the CCS stage for the first time in her varsity career.
On her final jump, the freshman delivered a gold-medal distance of 19-3.
“It felt good,” Ronan said. “I was pretty sure it was going to get me a mark.”
Not only did the jump give her the CCS championship, it was markedly the best improvement of any of the athletes to reach the long jump podium at the meet. Beginning her career with a distance of 15-1.5 in a frosh-soph home invitational March 3, she settled for second place overall.
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St. Ignatius assistant coach Mike Kennedy was impressed nonetheless.
“I knew something special was there just because the pop was something I hadn’t seen before,” Kennedy said.
Ronan used that pop to improve quickly. The following week in her varsity debut at the K-Bell Classic at Bellarmine, she landed a jump of 16-4, ranking fifth overall and first among underclassmen in the event. Just four days later at a tri-meet at St. Ignatius, she earned her first varsity title with a 16-7, just out-jumping junior teammate Amanda Varni’s 16-6.5.
Ronan went on to total four regular-season long jump titles, and also took the crown at the West Catholic Athletic League finals May 11. She also enjoyed a fairly accomplished season as a sprinter, claiming two second-place finishes at the WCAL finals, one in the girls’ 100 and another in the 4x100 relay.
With Enos graduating this year — the Marin native is moving on to compete at UCLA next season — it marks the turnover of the first great era of St. Ignatius jumpers, an era of which Ronan is now a part.
Kennedy also deserves much of the credit though. The 2010 graduate of St. Ignatius took over as the program’s jump coach four years ago, in Enos’ freshman year.
“[Enos] and his class, and the class above him, really set the culture as to how to work,” Kennedy said.
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