Taconic Hills CSD, East Chatham, NY, c/o 2024
AthleticNET Bio
Decathlons take a versatile athlete. Throws, jumps, sprints, vaults….you need to have it all. Well, Neil Howard has that and then some. Not only can he do decathlon, but he competes in many sports for his school. There is soccer, and golf in the fall; skiing, swimming, basketball and indoor track in the winter; and outdoor track in the spring.
Of all those sports, he’s been competing the longest in skiing. He started ski racing when he was six and has amassed quite a collection of trophies in the slalom and GS.
In track, he started with the sprints and long jump when he was seven. His core and leg strength from skiing made him explosive and able to compete well in those events. Hurdles, the 400, mile and pole vault came after that.
As he added more events, he was also growing. He went from 5-03, 120lb frame as a seventh grader to his current 6-0, 165 lbs.
As a multi eventer, he wasn’t successful initially. In the nine year old age group, he finished seventh in the pentathlon at USATF JO Nationals with 647 points. As he aged, he tried the pentathlon and had more success. The first year he finished 2,032 and then the following year, his sixth grade year, he won the event with 2,453.
“That’s when I really started to focus a little bit more on multis throughout the summer. I did take a step away through ages 13-14. I got back into it when I was in the 15-16 age group for the decathlon. And the first decathlon I ever did, I went out and won the National at USA TF nationals[6,316].”
His father, Neil, coached him in the pole vault and his sister coached him in the hurdles. The other events he learned from watching YouTube videos.
Pole vault has been an event where he has excelled. He started in the seventh grade and jumped 10-02.5. In the ninth grade he was up to 13-03 and this past year he went 16-0 and won the NY Federation championships(15-09). The event has proved to help him in other events, he opines.
“One thing it teaches you is body control. So much of pole vault is body control. That can carry over into other events, which gives me a little bit of an edge in certain things. The pole vault has always been that one factor that sets me apart in the dec because not many decathletes can pole vault.”
His track training during the week involves some speed endurance training of 300 meter repeats on one day, 110 meter hurdle drills each day, and on…
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