With strong final throw, Garfield senior Jesse Grace takes third in state shot put
COLUMBUS — After watching Jesse Grace muster another last-minute rise up the podium, Garfield track and field coach Matt Pfleger coined a new nickname for his senior thrower.
"The Heart Attack Kid."
No, the G-Men don't have a new sponsorship from the Cleveland Clinic. It's just that Grace has developed a remarkable propensity for saving his best throw for last — and occasionally causing his coaches and parents a good deal of stress as they wait for that big throw.
Friday, when he rose from eighth to third in the Division II state shot put with a final toss of 56 feet, 11 inches, was just the latest example.
"We kept on saying, 'You're going to give us a heart attack here,'" Pfleger said. "His mom kept on coming over, like, 'I don't know how you guys do this every year.' [It's] just kind of how it was. This year has just seemed like everything was waiting until that last throw."
What was amazing was that last throw came out of nowhere.
After a solid opening toss of 52-9, which got him to Friday's finals, Grace had three straight fouls followed by a penultimate throw of 46-8¼, as his cheering section's collective heart rate rose once again.
"First throw felt pretty good, and then after that I got a little bit in my head and then I just needed to calm down," said Grace, who added an 11th-place finish in the discus Saturday. "At the end, I did it right in the nick of time."
The week prior, Grace pulled off a similar feat in the Austintown Regional discus, rising from seventh and missing out on state to fourth and an automatic berth with a final toss of 156-11. His parents also recalled Grace doing the same at the middle school state meet, rising from not making the podium to second on his final throw.
"I don't know," said Grace, almost shrugging his shoulders at his inexplicable ability to come up clutch. "You kind of just let it all out at the end. You know it's then or never, so I guess just go for it."
How does Grace do it?
Well, to start with, in the tensest moments, he doesn't panic.
"I don't know if he ever changes, does he, Jim?" Matt Pfleger said, with his brother, Jim, the G-Men throws coach, standing beside him. "He just kind of goes with the flow and that's it."
Jesse Grace's rise in the shot put
Grace making the podium as a senior didn't come as a surprise.
After all, he came just five spots shy of the Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium podium last year when he placed 13th in the discus.
So, the podium wasn't a surprise.
Rather, it was the event in which he made the podium that came as a bit of a shock to Jim Pfleger, who saw Grace as a better fit for the discus earlier in his career. After all, Grace had the athleticism, frame and — well, for lack of a better word — grace of a discus thrower as opposed to the raw power of a shot put standout.
"He could really feel his positions in the shot better than he could in the discus, which, for being a smaller kid, it kind of surprised me," Pfleger said. "I think that was one of the good things with Jesse is he's such a dynamic kid, and then you add the strength to it, I mean, that's what made it go."
And go it did.
It's wild to think that Grace went from a low-40s shot put thrower last year, who hit a PR around 48, to tossing a 56-11 Friday.
"It's just incredible," Pfleger said. "We were really looking through [Friday] some of his marks from last year and he was really consistently a 42-, 43-foot thrower all last year, and then to come out this year and throw just under 57, it's pretty crazy."
Crazy but also par for the course for a vaunted G-Men throws program that has now had a top-three finish in the shot put in each of the past three seasons, with Riley LaPorte taking runner-up honors in 2021 and 2022.
"It's great," Grace said. "It's good [since] it's not a big town to come out to state and throw well and show everybody what Garrettsville is about."
This article originally appeared on Record-Courier: Garfield senior Jesse Grace takes third in the OHSAA state shot put
