Senior Spotlight: Men's Track and Field
5/1/2020 9:57:00 AM | Men's Track and Field
BETHLEHEM, Pa. - Over the coming weeks, Lehighsports.com is paying tribute to all of our senior student-athletes who did not have a Senior Day. Hear from a few of the seniors in the below question and answer, and head coach Matt Utesch in the above video.
Joey Kelly – Pole Vault – Pittsburgh, Pa. – Pine-Richland
What's your favorite Lehigh Track and Field memory?
JK: My favorite Lehigh Track and Field memory has to be winning the Patriot League Championship in the pole vault my senior year. It was something I never thought was going to be possible coming in as a freshman and I'm always going to be so grateful for my coaches and teammates who helped push me to that level.Â
Â
What legacy do you hope you're leaving?
JK: I hope my method of counting during the warmup gets passed down for a while. Also, I hope the pole vaulters especially remember what I was like during practice and that they keep just the good habits that I helped promote during my time on the team.Â
Â
Describe the relationship with your fellow seniors.
JK: My fellow seniors have been a huge source of support and they have helped push me to do well in the track as well as outside the track. There are a lot of relationships that I want to keep going after college ends. I also hope that we get a better send off since the shutdown took us all by surprise and we didn't get to get some of our goodbyes in.Â
Â
What have your coaches meant to you?
JK: The coaches have helped me through some really tough times and have really been there when I needed it. They have also made the track team seem less like a group and more like a family for me. They also care about your athletic performance, of course, but also how you are doing in class and they are invested in your academic success. Overall, they make an environment where it is possible to do well in track and still do really well in class.Â
Â
What will you miss most about Lehigh Track and Field?
JK: I will miss my teammates on the Track team the most. I've shared a lot of memories with the people on my team and I will miss not being in practice with them anymore. I'm still aiming to come back for meets next year and check up on my former teammates but I will still miss practicing and competing with this group of people.Â
Â
Thinking about where you were three years ago to now, how has the LehighÂ
student-athlete experience helped you grow as a person?
JK: I feel like I have grown a lot since my freshmen year and I'm proud of what I was able to accomplish at Lehigh. Lehigh has helped me professionally and I think my experience on the track team will really help me in the future because of all the hard work and time management skills that being a student-athlete entails.Â
Â
What are your postgraduate plans?Â
JK: I will be going to graduate school to obtain a PhD in chemistry. I also hope to use my extra season of eligibility in graduate school to do one more season of track.
Â
Ryan Paradise – Sprints/Middle Distance – Emmaus, Pa. – Mechanical Engineering
What's your favorite Lehigh Track & Field memory?
RP: My favorite memory on Lehigh track & field was at the 2019 IC4A outdoor championships. Me and three other teammates were running the 4x8 relay on the second day of the championships and it was downpouring, the hardest rain I have ever run in. Our team ran the grittiest race I have seen and we fought to earn third place in the race. It was the most fun race yet also the most ridiculous race I have ever run.
What legacy do you hope you're leaving?
RP: I hope that I will be remembered for my work ethic and desire to set a good example. I aspired to emulate a level of leadership that would inspire others to do the right thing. I just hope one of my younger teammates will try to continue to do the same.
Describe the relationship with your fellow seniors.
RP: The relationships I have with my fellow seniors is something I will miss a lot. I have made so many great friends over the years and will certainly keep in touch with who I can. From freshman to senior year, I have witnessed our class grow from boys and girls to men and women. These are people I know will succeed in life after Lehigh.
Â
What have your coaches meant to you?
RP: My coaches have been excellent resources for me to go to for help with anything I needed. They always had an open-door policy and would drop anything that they were doing to help me. More specifically, my event group coach, Coach Etters, was always welcoming to hearing any ideas or solutions that you had. He became a person whose perspective I valued a lot. I cannot imagine my Lehigh career with any other coaches.
Â
What will you miss most about Lehigh Track & Field?Â
RP: I will miss the feeling of being on this team. There is something special about knowing that no matter what, there will be a group of guys on the other side of the mountain who are ready to get after it every day and who want you to succeed to levels you never thought imaginable. Having those people to rely on is what I will miss most.Â
Â
Thinking about where you were three years ago to now, how has the LehighÂ
student-athlete experience helped you grow as a person?
RP: As a Lehigh Student-Athlete, I have most grow in my ability to see a situation from a different perspective, put yourself in someone else's shoes, as they say. Both my experience on this team and in the Lehigh Flight 45 programming have been vital to my ability to develop in this area. Being able to broaden my perspective and limit how much I let my own narrow scope of ideas dictate what I do has done dividends for my ability to exercise effective leadership.Â
Â
What are your postgraduate plans?Â
RP: After graduation, because I have done Army ROTC at Lehigh for 4 years, I will commission into the United States Army as a Second Lieutenant into the Army Engineering Corp. I will report to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri on June 1st, 2020 and begin my career as an Army Officer.
Â
Kyle Sult – Multi/Hurdles – Cranesville, Pa. – Mechanical EngineeringÂ
What's your favorite Lehigh Track and Field memory?
KS: Outdoor Patriots junior year. Going into the meet, I emphasized enjoying the sport and my teammates more than my results. I ended up having a low stress meet that I had a lot of fun with and ended up doing very well. I ran on the relay with Evan and Mike, and finished second in the decathlon, scoring the No. 2 decathlon score in LUTF history. While on the podium, Trevor, who holds the record and was my mentor for two years, FaceTimed me and congratulated me. It was a great competition and great moment with all of my teammates.
Â
What legacy do you hope you're leaving?
KS: I hope to leave the balance of resilience, hard work and the constant pursuit of improvement, and thoroughly enjoying the sport and having fun with it and your teammates. But more than that, I just hope that I made an impact on some of my teammates that they remember me as a good guy and good friend.
Â
Describe the relationship with your fellow seniors.
KS: I can truly say that I have enjoyed observing and been impressed by the successes, achievements, and improvements of my teammates more than my own. Some of my favorite memories include watching Joey pole vault at Indoor Patriots.
Â
What have your coaches meant to you?
KS: The coaches have been the reason I came to Lehigh and the reason I stayed at Lehigh. After nearly quitting my event and trying to transfer freshman year, Coach Matt convinced me to stay. It is all due to his personal investment in me and his, Coach Brooke's, and all of the other coaches' efforts that I became the athlete and human that I am at graduation.
Â
What will you miss most about Lehigh Track and Field?Â
KS: The teammates and the meat show. While I loved competing, everything that I will miss the most came before and after practices, workouts, and competitions. Hanging out, decompressing, and messing around with my teammates while warming up or after a hard workout or after a competition is definitely something that I took for granted in the moment.
Â
Thinking about where you were three years ago to now, how has the LehighÂ
student-athlete experience helped you grow as a person?
KS: My years at Lehigh have taught me the value of pursuing constant improvement and how to lead. I have learned how to quickly rebound from failure and to put supporting others first. Strangely, thanks to Lehigh Athletics, I have developed as much more than an athlete and have gotten to a place where, though I will miss it greatly, I will be ok without athletics.
Â
What are your postgraduate plans?Â
KS: I have a contract signed to become commissioned as an officer in the United States Navy and to serve as a teacher at the Naval Nuclear Power School.
Joey Kelly – Pole Vault – Pittsburgh, Pa. – Pine-Richland
What's your favorite Lehigh Track and Field memory?
JK: My favorite Lehigh Track and Field memory has to be winning the Patriot League Championship in the pole vault my senior year. It was something I never thought was going to be possible coming in as a freshman and I'm always going to be so grateful for my coaches and teammates who helped push me to that level.Â
Â
What legacy do you hope you're leaving?
JK: I hope my method of counting during the warmup gets passed down for a while. Also, I hope the pole vaulters especially remember what I was like during practice and that they keep just the good habits that I helped promote during my time on the team.Â
 Describe the relationship with your fellow seniors.
JK: My fellow seniors have been a huge source of support and they have helped push me to do well in the track as well as outside the track. There are a lot of relationships that I want to keep going after college ends. I also hope that we get a better send off since the shutdown took us all by surprise and we didn't get to get some of our goodbyes in.Â
Â
What have your coaches meant to you?
JK: The coaches have helped me through some really tough times and have really been there when I needed it. They have also made the track team seem less like a group and more like a family for me. They also care about your athletic performance, of course, but also how you are doing in class and they are invested in your academic success. Overall, they make an environment where it is possible to do well in track and still do really well in class.Â
Â
What will you miss most about Lehigh Track and Field?
JK: I will miss my teammates on the Track team the most. I've shared a lot of memories with the people on my team and I will miss not being in practice with them anymore. I'm still aiming to come back for meets next year and check up on my former teammates but I will still miss practicing and competing with this group of people.Â
Â
Thinking about where you were three years ago to now, how has the LehighÂ
student-athlete experience helped you grow as a person?
JK: I feel like I have grown a lot since my freshmen year and I'm proud of what I was able to accomplish at Lehigh. Lehigh has helped me professionally and I think my experience on the track team will really help me in the future because of all the hard work and time management skills that being a student-athlete entails.Â
Â
What are your postgraduate plans?Â
JK: I will be going to graduate school to obtain a PhD in chemistry. I also hope to use my extra season of eligibility in graduate school to do one more season of track.
Â
Ryan Paradise – Sprints/Middle Distance – Emmaus, Pa. – Mechanical Engineering
What's your favorite Lehigh Track & Field memory?
RP: My favorite memory on Lehigh track & field was at the 2019 IC4A outdoor championships. Me and three other teammates were running the 4x8 relay on the second day of the championships and it was downpouring, the hardest rain I have ever run in. Our team ran the grittiest race I have seen and we fought to earn third place in the race. It was the most fun race yet also the most ridiculous race I have ever run.
What legacy do you hope you're leaving?
RP: I hope that I will be remembered for my work ethic and desire to set a good example. I aspired to emulate a level of leadership that would inspire others to do the right thing. I just hope one of my younger teammates will try to continue to do the same.
Describe the relationship with your fellow seniors.
RP: The relationships I have with my fellow seniors is something I will miss a lot. I have made so many great friends over the years and will certainly keep in touch with who I can. From freshman to senior year, I have witnessed our class grow from boys and girls to men and women. These are people I know will succeed in life after Lehigh.
Â
What have your coaches meant to you?
RP: My coaches have been excellent resources for me to go to for help with anything I needed. They always had an open-door policy and would drop anything that they were doing to help me. More specifically, my event group coach, Coach Etters, was always welcoming to hearing any ideas or solutions that you had. He became a person whose perspective I valued a lot. I cannot imagine my Lehigh career with any other coaches.
Â
What will you miss most about Lehigh Track & Field?Â
RP: I will miss the feeling of being on this team. There is something special about knowing that no matter what, there will be a group of guys on the other side of the mountain who are ready to get after it every day and who want you to succeed to levels you never thought imaginable. Having those people to rely on is what I will miss most.Â
Â
Thinking about where you were three years ago to now, how has the LehighÂ
student-athlete experience helped you grow as a person?
RP: As a Lehigh Student-Athlete, I have most grow in my ability to see a situation from a different perspective, put yourself in someone else's shoes, as they say. Both my experience on this team and in the Lehigh Flight 45 programming have been vital to my ability to develop in this area. Being able to broaden my perspective and limit how much I let my own narrow scope of ideas dictate what I do has done dividends for my ability to exercise effective leadership.Â
Â
What are your postgraduate plans?Â
RP: After graduation, because I have done Army ROTC at Lehigh for 4 years, I will commission into the United States Army as a Second Lieutenant into the Army Engineering Corp. I will report to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri on June 1st, 2020 and begin my career as an Army Officer.
Â
Kyle Sult – Multi/Hurdles – Cranesville, Pa. – Mechanical EngineeringÂ
What's your favorite Lehigh Track and Field memory?
KS: Outdoor Patriots junior year. Going into the meet, I emphasized enjoying the sport and my teammates more than my results. I ended up having a low stress meet that I had a lot of fun with and ended up doing very well. I ran on the relay with Evan and Mike, and finished second in the decathlon, scoring the No. 2 decathlon score in LUTF history. While on the podium, Trevor, who holds the record and was my mentor for two years, FaceTimed me and congratulated me. It was a great competition and great moment with all of my teammates.
Â
What legacy do you hope you're leaving?
KS: I hope to leave the balance of resilience, hard work and the constant pursuit of improvement, and thoroughly enjoying the sport and having fun with it and your teammates. But more than that, I just hope that I made an impact on some of my teammates that they remember me as a good guy and good friend.
Â
Describe the relationship with your fellow seniors.
KS: I can truly say that I have enjoyed observing and been impressed by the successes, achievements, and improvements of my teammates more than my own. Some of my favorite memories include watching Joey pole vault at Indoor Patriots.
Â
What have your coaches meant to you?
KS: The coaches have been the reason I came to Lehigh and the reason I stayed at Lehigh. After nearly quitting my event and trying to transfer freshman year, Coach Matt convinced me to stay. It is all due to his personal investment in me and his, Coach Brooke's, and all of the other coaches' efforts that I became the athlete and human that I am at graduation.
Â
What will you miss most about Lehigh Track and Field?Â
KS: The teammates and the meat show. While I loved competing, everything that I will miss the most came before and after practices, workouts, and competitions. Hanging out, decompressing, and messing around with my teammates while warming up or after a hard workout or after a competition is definitely something that I took for granted in the moment.
Â
Thinking about where you were three years ago to now, how has the LehighÂ
student-athlete experience helped you grow as a person?
KS: My years at Lehigh have taught me the value of pursuing constant improvement and how to lead. I have learned how to quickly rebound from failure and to put supporting others first. Strangely, thanks to Lehigh Athletics, I have developed as much more than an athlete and have gotten to a place where, though I will miss it greatly, I will be ok without athletics.
Â
What are your postgraduate plans?Â
KS: I have a contract signed to become commissioned as an officer in the United States Navy and to serve as a teacher at the Naval Nuclear Power School.
Players Mentioned
Pole Vault
/ Men's Track and Field
Sprint/Mid-Distance
/ Men's Track and Field
Multi/Hurdles
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