Season Stories: Dominic Deluca

Dominic Deluca’s 11^th place at XC States and a 14^th place finish at the state meet in the 3200m outdoors left him with a bit of a bitter feeling. He was however the top returning AA finisher after a long list of seniors graduated. Deluca started training in late June to prepare for this upcoming XC season where he set out specific goals of “Winning Districts, States, and staying healthy”. To accomplish these goals Deluca did something he’d never done before, “really training where I should be so I knew I had to be smart about it” as he slowly increasing mileage week by week.”
His season started off with a bang at PTXC 5 where he ran 15:43, so he “just kept on rolling from there”, knowing how well his training had been working. He didn’t run many big invitationals after that, since Paul Short was cancelled due to the heat.

Soon his conference meet and District meet were upon him where he won “. . . over Dominic Hockenbury, who I figured would be my main competition for states as well.” Going into the state meet Deluca planned differently than most runners. He says: “I made sure to not taper down for states because I plan on running Footlocker regionals and try and make it to nationals. Without any speed work I knew it would be a tough task to win the state meet, let alone get under the 16 minute mark which was also in my mind.”

Deluca missed the elusive 16 minute mark at Hershey, running 16:26, but he still got the state win that he was looking for. In the end, Deluca has accomplished the 3 goals he put out for himself at the beginning of the season, and now he has one left that was tacked on, making it to Footlocker Nationals. When reflecting on his season, Deluca states: “All in all, i feel as if i had a great season so far.”

There are still a few chapters yet to unfold in Deluca's story, so he doesn’t have any real goals in mind for track, but after a strong XC season, look for Deluca to continue to dream big and succeed in the future after he has worked to and accomplished his main goals so far this XC season.