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Mangan hurdles to new heights for Mt. Lebanon

By Eleanor Bailey almanac Sports Editor ebailey@thealmanac.Net 7 min read
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Molly Mangan may not be the best judge of her talents but the Mt. Lebanon High School junior has her coach Aaron Panczyk sold on her hurdling abilities.

“She might not think the hurdles is her best event but I think it is,” Panczyk said.

“For a kid, who has so much talent, who probably could go through the motions if she wanted to, she doesn’t. Everything she does from the time she warm-ups for practice to the time that she leaves the track is done correctly.”

From early on, Mangan learned to do it right. At age 8, her father, Jim, took her to the track one night to run. Mangan said she “ran a bunch of laps” but when she had finished her father just looked at her. He knew talent, too, when he saw it, after all he is a record-holder in the high hurdles at Mt. Lebanon.

Because her dad had a friend that coached club track, Mangan joined the U.S. Track and Field Federation and started competing. At the regional championships held at California University of Pennsylvania, Mangan finished fourth in the 200-meter dash.

“I’ve been running ever since,” she explained.

Two years later, she started running the hurdles because she competed in the pentathlon. In addition to the shot put, high jump, long jump and 800-meter race, the event featured the 100-meter hurdles.

“Actually, I don’t prefer the hurdles because they are harder,” Mangan said. “I prefer sprinting because there are less obstacles.”

While Mangan competes in anything that is 400-meters or less for Mt. Lebanon, including the 4×100 and 4×400 relays, she actually excels most at the intermediate hurdles. She holds the school record in the event. Recently, she set a new meet mark when she won the 300-meter hurdles in 43.87 during Tri-State Track Coaches Association Meet held April 14 at West Mifflin.

Additionally, the 16-year-old junior will compete in the prestigious Penn Relays to be held April 26-28 at Franklin Field in Philadelphia. The event is the oldest and largest track and field competition in the United States. Only 20 female hurdlers were selected to compete and Mangan will race against a field that includes three girls from Jamaica as well as standouts from Florida and California.

Panczyk said Mangan will be running against the best girls in the country and in the world because the Penn Relays are a national and international meet.”

“Molly’s a pretty anxious kid. She puts a lot of pressure on herself,” Panczyk said. “We talked though about the Penn Relays just being a culmination of all the hard work she’s put into up to this point in her life. So, it’s a reward.”

Mangan acknowledges as much. She does admit to having some personal goals.

“I’m not going there to win but to do my best and get a great time,” said the 16-year-old daughter of Marlene Mangan. “It will be a great experience to learn and grow in my hurdles and get used to big meets and big races.”

Mangan has already been in a few big events and races. She is the WPIAL runner-up in the intermediate hurdles and a sixth-place finisher at the PIAA state championships. She is also a veteran on Lebo’s sprint relays. She anchored the winning 4×100 relay team of Flynn Begor, Katie Ward and Patrice Smith as well as the runner-up 4×400 relay unit at the recent Tri-State Meet and Mt. Lebanon Invitational.

So her local goals are simple. At WPIALs, she wants to help the relays medal. And, she wants to win the hurdles, which she lost last year by a mere tenth of a second to Jayla Ellis. At states, however, Mangan switched positions with the Oakland Catholic senior, securing sixth by a .37-second time difference.

“Being nudged out last year gives me incentive,” she said. “Jayla’s a real nice girl, but she’s also a really good hurdler.”

While she has not accessed her objectives for the PIAA championships yet, Mangan said it is “always good to aim high” and see where that takes you.

Career-wise, Mangan is aiming high. She said that once she entered high school, she started thinking about what she really wanted to do and the military appealed to her. She would “love” to attend the Naval Academy. She wants to run track for the Midshipmen and study engineering. In fact, Mangan is already a Sea Cadet, which is akin to Junior ROTC except that instead of officer-based it’s enlisted-based.

“Once I joined, that’s when I started really looking at the Naval Academy. I’d love to go there.”

If not the Naval Academy, Mangan said she would consider going the Navy ROTC route to pursue her degree in mechanical engineering. Penn State, Carnegie Mellon and Duquesne offer such programs along with Division I track.

While she hasn’t thought much about her athletic endeavors and goals in college, Mangan knows that improvement is on top of her agenda.

“Anyone who is committed to a sport, the biggest thing that they can do is to just aim high and work hard. In college, I just hope that I will be able to continue to work on my times.”

Coach Panczyk sees only improvement in Mangan’s future for several reasons.

“She has no ego,” he said. “Mangan shows up everyday, works her tail off, listens, takes what the coaching staff tells her and puts it into action and she does it quickly. She’s a fearless kid, a fearless worker, and Mangan wants to do great things.”

On the track, Mangan wants to do those great things for her teammates.

“My track goals are usually to improve my times to help my team. My focus is to get better in my running and sprinting and if that encourages colleges then that is great, too,” she said.

Age: 16

Birthdate: May 26

Parents: Jim and Marlene

Sibling: Keara, sophomore at Rochester Institute of Technology.

Year: Junior

High School: Mt. Lebanon

GPA: 4.6

Career goals: Attend the Naval Academy and become a mechanical engineer.

Food: “I’m a real fan of hot dogs; chili, cheese dogs especially.”

Book: “I’m into young adult fantasy and one of my favorite authors is Rick Riordan, who is known for his Percy Jackson and the Olympians series but I really liked The Heroes of Olympus series. I’m a fantasy nerd, I guess.”

Movie: “Black Panther”

Favorite class: Robotics. “I got to take this course this past semester and the whole time it was just building little robots and programming them. My team entered a tournament and we ended up winning. We got a trophy. So that was just awesome.”

If you could program the perfect robot to perform the one task you hate, what would it do? “I would have it fill out all my work sheet assignments. I guess work sheets are good but they are kind of tedious. I would have it do my smaller homework assignments.”

Dream destination: Japan for the beautiful scenery and culture and awesome technology or just somewhere that’s really sunny and sandy like the Bahamas. I’m not into the cold much. I really like warm, sunny places.

What would you rather be remembered for: winning an Olympic gold medal or creating a robot that helps humanity? “I don’t know. In the future, I am really looking to commission as an officer in the Navy so I think if I could just be remembered as a hard-working leader and officer, who helps my sailors or soldiers, I think that would be awesome.”

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