AUSTIN — For UIL Class 4A state discus champion Sidney “Trey” Mock, Friday turned out to be a great day.
Beautiful sunny weather, a personal best record of 175-04 and, of course, a shiny gold medal around his neck to capped off a successful day for the Port Isabel senior.
“I’m excited because I never though I would get here,” said Mock “I worked hard in practice and my first throw today was 165 so I knew I had it there, but I wanted to do better because that’s what I try to do every track meet.
“I throw my best throw, and then I try beating that one and just try beating myself.”
After preliminaries, the athletes were reorganized by how they did and Mock was the final thrower of the session.
Mock threw 164-4 on his first throw, 175-4 on his second, 173-2 on his third, 159-0 on his fourth and he fouled on his final attempt.
However, before his final throw, Mock knew he had won gold.
But while Friday was a very good day, things weren’t always great for Mock
After three consecutive years of missing the state meet, Mock and coach Al Senteno began the year with one goal in mind: To qualify for a trip to Austin.
With that, Mock felt motivated to make his senior year his best one yet and right the wrongs from the previous seasons. In fact, last year Mock missed out on state by a heartbreaking one foot.
But this year was different.
“Since the Meet of Champions, he’s been peaking and PRing (personal record) every week since then,” said Senteno of Mock. “He’s won every track meet except for one this year and our goal heading into area and regionals, and especially state, was to put pressure on the field on his first throw and throw a good throw.
“I’m just very proud of him. He’s a great competitor and hard worker,” added Senteno.
“After last year, he made it his goal to make it to state. I remember after regionals at Kingsville last year he said, ‘Next year, we’re going to finish it. We are going to make it to regionals then state and we are going to finish it at state.’ My first words to him after he won were, ‘we just finished it.’”
