Verona, New Jersey –Pole vaulting is more than your ordinary leap of faith. You’ve got to charge down a narrow track, plant a pole that weighs just a fraction of your weight and hope that it will catapult you safely over a bar suspended several feet in the air. Without focus, and a strong core, it’s just not going to happen.

But Samantha Intili makes that happen on a very regular basis. A member of the Verona High School Winter Tack team for four years, she is a team captain this year and played a big part in Verona’s first-ever state sectional championship for the girls team with her pole-vault performance. Intili placed fifth that championship in the pole vault, with a jump of 8’6″. She also placed at at the conference and county championships, and qualified to compete at the state-wide Meet of Champions. For her efforts, Intili is the Verona Sports Boosters Senior Athlete of the Week.

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NEW YORK — Greg Gallagher dashed down the runway, planted the pole and vaulted in the air inside the Armory, flying toward the bar perched 15 feet, 6 inches off the ground. That bar shook a bit on his way over, but it stayed up.

The Iona Prep senior from Elmsford crash-landed on the pad and clapped his hands. He had just equaled his personal best and with it, won the event Tuesday at the prestigious Eastern States Championships.

“It really feels good to win here, having a lot of competition, bar starting high,” Gallagher said. “It gives me a little preparation for states and nationals.”

This 78th version of the Easterns was indeed a tuneup for several area track and field athletes bound for the state/Federation meet Saturday at Cornell and another chance to compete for several who aren’t.

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2012 is a leap year, meaning that February, the shortest month, has an extra day, bringing the year to 366 days. This notable event comes only every four years. Which means you have an extra 24 hours. So what will you do with yourself? How about heading to Disneyland for 24 hours straight, catching a movie, or spending the day skiing?Lookups on the Web are taking a leap, including “leap day activities,” along with the quadrennial questions: “what is leap year,” “why is there a leap year” and “history of leap year.” Here, your guide to the day.

 When is it? An extra day is added to the month of February every four years. This year, Leap Day is on Wednesday, February 29.

 Why we need Leap Day: Usually, our year is 365 days long. Except that it’s not: A full cycle of seasons is actually 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 16 seconds long, or about 365.25 days. Over time, the extra quarter of a day adds up, and without Leap Day, the calendar would be one day out of sync with the seasons. After 30 years, it would be about a week off, and after 100 years, it would be nearly a month off.
Bing Quock, the assistant director of Morrison Planetarium at the California Academy of Sciences, explains, “Leap Day is added as a correction to the calendar so that it stays in sync with the seasons … that way, the seasons start on the same day from year to year to year.”

 The history of Leap Year: Leap Year has been around for 2,000 years, Continue reading →