Jake Gibbons came into the spring season of his senior year looking forward to the track and field season. He had spent time working with DeSales women’s track coach Kyle McHugh on the finer points of running the 400-meter dash and was anxious to put everything he learned into practice on the track. While he had high hopes, he was not expecting just how much success he would find.

“I had worked with coach McHugh and really liked what he had taught me, so I thought the season was going to go well,” said Gibbons, who is already taking classes at Penn State during their summer session. “I didn’t really have the expectation of reaching states, but I thought the season would go well for me.”

The offseason work, which included adding jogging and running through his neighborhood, worked well and he placed second in both the 400 and 200 in leagues, setting career bests in both events. Even though he has always liked the balance of speed and endurance that the 400 poses, he ran the 200-meter at districts and again reset his career best time to a 22.89 in finals to finish second and earn a spot in states.

“The 400 has always been my favorite because it’s a challenge,” said Gibbons. “One of the things that I learned working with coach McHugh was how to balance going from the jog to the full sprint. That sense of timing was always tough for me. I prefer the sprint events. I had run cross country in seventh grade but dropped it to play football. Most of the other football players ran sprints in track, so that just seemed to be a better fit for me.”

Gibbons was able to trim just a tick off his district time at states, running the 200 with a time of 22.87 and finishing 16th in the event.

In football, Gibbons started to play in sixth grade before taking a season off to run cross country. He went back to football in the fall and continued to play throughout high school.

With Salisbury’s offense slanted more toward a running game than passing, Gibbons’ role as a receiver did not garner huge numbers, but he did lead the team in yards per game in both his junior and senior seasons, averaging 21.8 yards per game as a junior and 10.8 yards per game last season.

Football at Salisbury has been difficult over the past few seasons and the team won just five games over the span of Gibbons’ high school career. The difficult times proved to be a good lesson for Gibbons and helped him to appreciate his accomplishments in track more than he normally would have.

“I hate losing, but I did learn that you have to deal with losing sometimes and it just makes you work harder,” said Gibbons. “The losing also helped me to appreciate winning a lot more than I might have had we been winning all the time. Once track season came around, I was able to perform and have a greater impact on winning and losing by how hard I worked and what I put into the sport. Track gives you the opportunity to go out and perform on my standards.”

Gibbons decided not to continue his athletic career in college as he’s headed to State College to study engineering.