SEO TITLE (60 characters): Seckman’s Noa Isaia caps prep career with discus championship

SEO description: Seckman senior Noa Isaia placed first among Class 5 competitors in the discus
event at the MSHSAA Class 5 state championships from May 26-27.

URL TITLE: seckman-track-noa-isaia-discus-mshsaa-class-5-championships

‘One Last Opportunity’: Seckman’s Noa Isaia makes final prep discus throw count

By Brandon Haynes
For the Leader

Seckman senior Letuligasenoa “Noa” Isaia was down to the final discus throw of his high school
career at the MSHSAA Class 5 state championship in Jefferson City, and the future Arkansas
State track and field athlete let it fly.

“I had to resort to (using) all of my energy in one last opportunity,” said Isaia, who signed a letter
of intent this past fall to join the Red Wolves. “Luckily enough, it worked out.”

Isaia’s sixth and final attempt landed 59.23 meters away from him, vaulting him from second and
into a first-place podium finish in the state competition held May 26-27.The throw also broke the
Jaguars’ school record by nearly four meters, a mark that the senior had set only three weeks
before.

“When they read off the measurement, it was like all of the stress I had felt, all of the nights and
early mornings of getting up to go practice before work or football … I just felt it all finally paid
off,” he said.

Seckman boys track and field finished 20th among Class 5 programs behind his efforts.

Isaia entered his final throw trailing Nixa freshman Jackson Cantwell, the son of former Olympic
shot put silver medalist Christian Cantwell, but avenged an earlier defeat in the shot put to leave
with a gold medal.

“On his last throw, he just put it all together,” Seckman track and field coach Stewart Van Horne
said. “You just heard the roar of the crowd go with it … We always knew that the competition
brings out the best in him, and it showed on that last one.”
Isaia’s emphatic throw came one day after he placed seventh in the shot put at 16.55 meters, also
a new school record. His throw landed exactly 10 feet behind Cantwell, who won the event with
a Missouri Class 5 record toss.

“Sitting in seventh place on the podium, it wasn’t the best feeling ever,” said Isaia. “I needed
everything to be perfect the next day … and to just take a second and tell God that I’m thankful
for the opportunity he’s given to me, and I just needed to utilize it to the best of my abilities”

Isaia’s first-place finish capped what the senior called “quite literally the perfect season,” in
which he went undefeated in the discus event. This season’s accolades built upon his
second-place finish in the discus last season, which also came down to his final throw.

The state championship also held a deeper meaning for the future Red Wolf, who said it was
special to represent where he was from while being able to make his family, school and town
proud. It marked a full-circle moment for the senior, who joined track in his junior year with
those factors in mind.

“I’ve had some pretty good success with track and field in my family,” Isaia said. “I have a
cousin that holds a big Illinois state record, and I wanted to fill those shoes that were given to me
that I never really looked to take that chance to go out and try something new.”

Isaia has three cousins who have made waves in the high school athletics realm across the state
line in Edwardsville, Illinois— AJ, Eric and Iose Epenesa.

AJ, currently a defensive lineman for the Buffalo Bills, is the most well known of the three and
holds the Illinois discus record at 62.76 meters. Eric, the lone Epenesa not to stand out in track,
joined the University of Iowa football program as a walk-on in 2021.

Iose, a four-star defensive end and sophomore track standout, placed fifth in the discus and 20th
in the shot put at the Illinois High School Association Boys State Outdoor Championship on the
same day of Isaia’s championship victory.

“We have pretty big shoes to fill in our family. It’s kind of like we had one person step up and
take charge which was AJ, and it’s up to the rest of the family if we want to follow in his tracks
or not,” Isaia said.

Seckman girls topple program’s 4x800-meter record

Only six days after falling less than one second shy of snapping a 20-year program record, the
Seckman 4x800-meter relay team finally broke that barrier when it mattered most.
Angela Ward, Elizabeth Kundert, Jessica Lane and Ariel Laird teamed up to finish in 9:39.87 to
place seventh in the state competition, eclipsing the previous record by over four seconds. Their
podium finish also gave the quartet the first scoring relay in team history.

“They were four qualifiers for cross country in the fall,” Van Horne said. “All four of them just
have this real big desire to go out there and do their best every single time … They didn’t let
people pass them without having to work for it, and they all finished the last half of their race in
the best way we could’ve hoped for.”

Haley Sexton recorded Seckman’s only other podium spot of the state tournament with a
seventh-place finish in the pole vault. Her vault fell shy of the school record but served as a
personal-best mark in the event at 3.24 meters.

Van Horne said Sexton’s meet-by-meet improvement stood out to him throughout the second half
of the season, and her growth down the stretch is something that the first-year Seckman coach
hopes his program will carry into next season as a unit.

“From Day 1 to the end of the year, everyone, no matter if you’re the No. 1 or No. 50 athlete, we
want you to improve,” Van Horne said. “That takes every single person in the group … There’s
opportunities for everyone to step into holes and make a name for themselves.”

The Jaguars’ girls finished with 3.5 team points and a 39th-place finish at the state competition.