Correspondent photo / Robert Hayes Boardman senior Micah Beckwith competes in the 400-meter run during Senior Night at Spartans Stadium. Beckwith, a former state qualifier, posted personal-best times in all three events he competed in Tuesday afternoon.

BOARDMAN — It’s genuinely hard to believe that the regular season for high school track and field is slowly coming to a conclusion.

Tuesday evening, the Boardman Spartans held their Senior Night against crosstown rival Canfield, and a pair of seated-athletes looked to help boost their teams’ scores for the meet.

Micah Beckwith, a senior at Boardman, posted new personal-bests in the 100-meter dash (21.01s), 400-meter run (1:13.53), and 800 (1:43:00), along with a mark of 12-3.75 in the shot put.

“I’m the only seated athlete here (at Boardman), so I always just practice with the runners,” Beckwith said. “Honestly, I think it’s a better challenge that way. They’re faster than me 99 percent of the time, but that 1 percent feels great sometimes.

“You don’t think that track would be a team sport most of the time, but it really is whenever you got people cheering for you whenever you’re on the track, you hear everybody yelling for you it’s a great feeling.”

Just like Canfield’s Cody Piver, another seated-athlete competing at Boardman Tuesday evening, Beckwith uses gloves to strike the rims of the wheels on his racing chair, being sure to keep up a good rhythm and pace.

Starting back during his freshman year, the Boardman senior found a natural knack for the track.

“I actually went to a disability sports camp and we went and tried all kinds of stuff,” Beckwith said. “We tried basketball, hockey, tennis, and I went into it thinking I wasn’t going to like track very much, but it turned out to be my best event, so I just kept going with it. It’s just something I kind of had a natural talent at, it felt really good to get into immediately.

“Then, as I got into it through the school, I just kind of cleaned up my pace and stuff like that.”

Piver, a junior at the Mahoning County Career and Technical Center, competes for the Cardinals, and found track as a way to improve his conditioning for his wrestling and Taekwondo.

“Back in 2019, I was originally supposed to go for my first-degree blackbelt in Taekwondo, that’s when I had at first started running track because I needed to being able to run three miles in 30 minutes for my physical fitness section of my test,” Piver said. “So, I started running 5Ks, started running track. The 100 for speed, because why not? I do the 400 for endurance and I throw as an add-on sort of.”

Piver also competes on the Speech and Debate team within the original oratory category, which involves crafting and reciting an original speech to judges and fellow speech competitors.

Correspondent photo / Robert Hayes Canfield junior Cody Piver, a student at Mahoning County Career and Technical Center, competes in the 400m Tuesday afternoon at Boardman. A wrestler and mixed martial artist, Piver uses track as a way to condition himself for his other sports.

As a multi-sport athlete, Piver feels like he has the ability to represent and empower other para-athletes each time he prepares for a track and field meet.

“It is honestly, critical, because seated-athletes and para-athletes in general in sports, in general, it doesn’t matter what it is, it doesn’t matter if it’s Olympic track, basketball, whatever it maybe, they are way misrepresented,” Piver said. “So, I wanted to get out here and kind of show people who maybe are wheelchair-bound or are disabled in some form or fashion that, ‘Hey, you can do this too, because that’s the reason I started this.’ ”

He also recently earned a position as an IT Professional through MCCTC, something that has added a new challenge along with his busy sports schedule.

“I have to balance that now with track until after the first week of June which is state, and then the summer rush for people that are in the tech department is massive,” Piver said.

As for Beckwith, one massive difference between his freshman to senior campaigns is his preference in events – especially for the 800.

“My freshman year, my 800m was terrible, I hated it,” Beckwith said. “But, now I think that my 800 has gone from my least favorite to probably my favorite now.

“At first I hated it, because it was hard to pace it right, I ended up really tired by the end of the first lap, but with my coaches and teammates and everyone telling me some techniques and stuff like that, it helped me get better at it and now it’s my best event.”

Beckwith also competed in hockey for a time as a hobby, along with taking part in events through Adaptive Sports of Ohio (ASPO).

Casey Followay, the son of Lisa Followay, the founder of ASPO in Dalton, Ohio, competed at the 2019 Parapan American Games in Peru for Team USA, and has been someone that Beckwith has looked toward for positive inspiration throughout his track and field journey.

“I kind of looked up to him a lot getting into this, he’s on his way to the Olympics probably, so I’m definitely looking at him, using him as a good role model,” Beckwith said.