As Annie Breger was in the middle of the high jump competition with teammates Camille Finley and Bernadette Forbush, she couldn’t help but think about how far everyone has come. The three all attended Southside School, as did junior running standout Marisa Villegas.
“It’s been a pretty exciting ride since middle school,” Breger said. “We were always pretty athletic, and we grew up as athletes comparing mile times. Now that we’re competing together in high school, it’s really exciting to see us grow as athletes.”
Finley won the high jump with a mark of 5 feet, 2 inches as the Haybalers hosted a dual meet against North Monterey County on March 23. As usual, there are a number of intriguing stories from this year’s team. Freshman sensation Anthony Delgado has burst onto the scene in the 300-meter hurdles, with victories at the Soquel Invite and in dual meets against Salinas and NMC.
Delgado has a personal-record (PR) time of 41.33 seconds, which as of two weeks ago was the fourth fastest time in the Central Coast Section. Then there’s senior Bernadette Forbush, who is having a breakout season after sharpening her technique. Forbush won the 100-meter hurdles event—her first-ever win in an individual event—in 17.82 seconds at the Soquel Invite.
Forbush and Delgado credited hurdles coach Ryan Bartylla for helping them develop the proper technique to run their best times ever.
“Coach Bartylla deserves a lot of credit,” Forbush said. “He’s very encouraging and works on specific things for you, so it’s very useful.”
Like most athletes who hurdle regularly, Delgado and Forbush have taken their lumps and bruises this season.
“On the second day of hurdling (in practice), I almost fell flat on my face,” Delgado said.
Said Forbush: “Over the years you get a lot of blue ankles and knees from hitting the hurdles or falling. I’m still getting them.”
Forbush, who also runs the 100 hurdles in addition to the high jump, experienced a breakthrough last season after learning how to 4-step instead of utilizing the 5-step in her freshman and sophomore years. Forbush, who ran cross country as a freshman and did water polo as a junior, loves experiencing a variety of sports.
“There are different aspects of every sport and different techniques, which make them all enjoyable,” she said.
Like most freshmen, Delgado didn’t know what to expect before the season started. Southside has no track and field team, but Delgado knew he had above-average speed after winning multiple 100-meter races and breaking records in grade school. Still, doing the hurdles at the high school level was a great unknown, but he’s adjusted nicely.
“I got better in the first three weeks of practice,” he said. “I started 3-stepping and from there got better and better every day.”
Interestingly enough, Delgado will be moonlighting between junior varsity and varsity races this season. For the junior varsity meets, Delgado will compete in the 65-meter hurdles. For the varsity races, he’ll be in the 300. Delgado also will run some relays, just like he did when he ran a leg of the 4×100 relay against NMC.
The 6-foot, 162-pound Delgado was also the starting center on the freshmen football team last fall, and he plans on making the junior varsity team as a sophomore. Even though Delgado loves football, he might have found the perfect event for him in the hurdles. Long, lean and athletic, the speedy Delgado said it’s nice to have a top hurdler like Isaac Regalado as a teammate.
Regalado is the defending MBL champion in the 110 hurdles, and advanced to the semifinals of the CCS Championships in both hurdles events.
“It’s nice to know I can push a guy who made CCS last year,” Delgado said. “He pushes me and I push him, and good teamwork will make us both better.”
Breger couldn’t wait for the season to start, as evidenced by her performances. Breger has already hit PRs in the high jump, long jump and triple jump. When Breger went 35 feet, 11 ½ inches in the triple jump at the Watsonville Wildcat Relays, she qualified for the competitive Stanford Invitational and will be put into consideration for the prestigious Arcadia Invitational.
“I just remember practicing on my triple jump form with my coaches all that week,” she said. “ I was working on running off the board and landing with my feet together. I PR’d by two feet at that meet, and it caught me by surprise. I had a feeling I could PR, but I didn’t know I would PR by that much.”
Breger remembers jumping up and down afterward, which isn’t a surprise. In the dual meet against NMC, Breger was grinning from ear to ear during the high jump competition.
“Coach (Rob) Macias says I have a signature move, and when he’s talking to me I give him two thumbs up and a smile,” she said.
Whereas a lot of athletes get jittery or too try to amp themselves up to the point where it becomes a performance reducer, Breger takes the opposite approach. It’s a method that tends to work well at any level.
“I don’t want to keep it to serious, because I’ll get tense and start going crazy,” she said. “You just have to stay loose and relax. That’s what I tell all the jumpers if they have a bad jump—to just relax, take a deep breath and calm down. You’ll be fine.”
Breger comes from an athletic family, as they all play sports. Breger’s fraternal twin, Jack, is an outstanding hitter on the boys volleyball team. Growing up, Breger heard endless stories about her dad, Sam, who played volleyball at Pepperdine University and had a stint playing professionally in Italy.
“My dad still goes to the beach every weekend, and he’s 55 (years old) or something,” Breger said. “My mom (Beth) still plays tennis weekly, and my sister (Katherine) still plays volleyball and tennis. But the entire family, we’re all volleyball maniacs I guess. We’re a very active family. In the summer we could be playing volleyball in the backyard and suddenly have a pushup contest.”
Since Annie and Jack are the same age, they have a healthy competition in pretty much everything.
“We would always have competitions, like seeing who could touch the ceiling in the kitchen first,” she said. “We pushed each other, and that helped us grow as athletes.”
Breger has had two strong seasons on the girls volleyball team, and she’s really coming into her own in track and field. Talented, hard working and armed with a positive approach, Breger’s best days are still ahead of her.
