OTTOVILLE — Winning the same event three years or more in a row at the state track meet puts an athlete in an elite category, but that might be one of the farthest things from Brooke Mangas’ mind this week.
The Ottoville senior has won the girls Division III state high jump the last two years and set a D-III state meet record last season when she cleared 5 feet, 10 inches. She will be trying to win for the third time Friday afternoon at Jesse Owens Stadium.
Obviously, she has heard questions about repeating more than a few times.
“Everybody asks me. I’m like, ‘I’m going to try. You just have to do the best you can,’ ” Mangas said.
“I never look at stuff. I just focus on what I need to do. I know everybody else is going to perform great, too. So you just have to do your best,” she said.
Mangas — the regional and district champion so far this year — has cleared 5 feet, 8 inches on her best jump this spring.
Her winning height at the state meet in 2015 was 5 feet, 8 inches and she finished ninth there, at 5 feet, 2 inches, as a freshman.
Last year’s record-setting 5-10 effort would have tied for tenth place in the women’s NCAA Division I high jump at the national championships at the University of Oregon’s Hayward Field.
Mangas got to that level without specializing, though. She was a four-year starter in basketball and played volleyball.
This year the separation between basketball and track was even less than usual when Ottoville got to the state semifinals in girls basketball.
“I don’t do anything until track starts, so that’s different. A lot of people have done indoor track but I’ve never done that because I love basketball so much I just didn’t want to give it up,” she said.
In addition to working with Ottoville track coach Vaughn Horstman, Mangas has been tutored by former All-American Abbie Stechschulte Norton. The Columbus Grove graduate was a track All-American at West Virginia University and finished sixth in the heptathlon at the 2012 Olympic Trials.
Mangas said she did one year of gymnastics and two years of dance when she was younger. “But after that I was done with that. I just wanted to do sports,” she said.
When she got into track in junior high, she picked the high jump because that’s what a friend of her older sister Taylor did.
“Her friend (Tonya Kaufman) was kind of like my role model since I was little so I wanted to do what she did,” she said.
Her first high jump efforts began with small steps.
“The first time I did it, I jumped off two feet,” Mangas said, pointing to both her feet firmly planted on the track at Ottoville. “It was not very good. But I just kept practicing.”
In addition to two state championships, all that practicing led to a scholarship offer from Ohio State. Mangas signed with the Buckeyes in November.
“I got letters from multiple schools. I had to decide on which five I wanted to go to and I’ve always been a huge Ohio State fan. So getting that letter was really exciting. When I got that I knew I had to go on an official visit there and I just loved it,” she said.
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