Canon-McMillan’s Rose Kuchera looks to end decorated high school career with PIAA gold medal

By: Chris Harlan
Thursday, May 23, 2024 | 12:37 PM

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Canon-McMillan’s Rose Kuchera is traveling this week to the state track championships where the senior needs just one more medal to complete her triple jump collection.

She already has silver and bronze.

“Sophomore year I got third and last year I got second, so it really would be nice to keep that going with a gold hopefully,” said Kuchera, one of the WPIAL’s most versatile track and field athletes. “But honestly, any placement and medal at the state meet is a big accomplishment.”

The two-day PIAA track championships start Friday at Shippensburg.

The Duquesne recruit last week took home three more gold medals at the WPIAL championships by winning the triple jump, long jump and 100-meter hurdles in Class 3A girls. This was the third year in a row she won WPIAL titles in both the triple jump and hurdles — upping her collection of WPIAL gold medals to eight.

“It feels pretty great,” she said. “I really don’t know how to put it into words, but it’s just awesome to bring my senior season almost to an end.”

She also repeated as WPIAL champion in the long jump last week, and ran with a 400-meter relay team that qualified for states. It was a hectic schedule that would test anyone’s endurance, but she joked that there wasn’t enough time between events for her to get tired.

“A lot of my best (results) are when it’s so close I’m staying warm,” she said. “I have no room to get tired. One event is just warming me up for the next one.”

But Kuchera isn’t the only Canon-McMillan athlete that runs and jumps at a championship level.

Big Macs junior Colton Dean, a future college decathlete, qualified for states in the boys 100 meters, 300-meter hurdles and long jump. He won two individual gold medals at the WPIAL championships, in the hurdles and the 200 meters, an event he won’t run in Shippensburg.

If Dean gets his wish, he wants to be the WPIAL’s next Ayden Owens, the former North Allegheny star who’s now a world class decathlete.

“I look up to him,” Dean said. “I met him (at Slippery Rock’s) stadium last year. I’ve been in contact with him and he helps me out on a lot of things. He’s a very good role model.”

Bouncing back and forth from track events to field events isn’t always easy. Consider Kuchera’s workload at WPIALs.

She’d just finished her triple jump prelims when the call went out for the hurdles. She hurried to the starting line at Slippery Rock’s stadium and quickly qualified for those finals, as well.

“And then I come back to do triple finals, where I had my best jump of the season,” she said. “Then I go straight back to hurdles for finals, and I tied my overall PR, which I have not done since sophomore year.”

So, she admitted, maybe a hectic schedule is her best strategy.

Kuchera won’t run hurdles at states but will try to medal in both jumps. She was seeded second in the triple jump at 39 feet, 1 inch, behind only Souderton’s Destini Smith, a junior who qualified with a jump of 41-10½ at the PIAA District 1 meet.

In the long jump, Kuchera was seeded eighth at 18-2.

In her third trip to Shippensburg, she said she is a different athlete than she was for the first two. The biggest improvements, she said, might be from how much time she’s spent focused on learning technique.

“Years before, I had kind of jumped and hoped for the best, especially sophomore year,” she said. “I wasn’t really worried about the little things. But once you start reaching high goals, you have to start paying attention to the little things to get any inch or foot better.”

Dean placed fourth in the long jump at states a year ago, but he’s heading there this year hoping for a top three finish. He had an off day in the event at the WPIAL meet — faulting on five of his six jumps — but his jump of 21-11 was still good enough to qualify.

He said a recent change to his run-up caused him some issues but was confident those could be fixed before states.

“I’m still working on my steps, so it’s not consistent,” Dean said. “Once I’m consistent, I genuinely believe I’ll be in 24 feet easily. It’s just that I’ve got to get my steps right and then my jumps are flying.”

Chris Harlan is a TribLive reporter covering sports. He joined the Trib in 2009 after seven years as a reporter at the Beaver County Times. He can be reached at charlan@triblive.com.

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