Last season, Patrick Taylor, just a sophomore for Norwich, was named the track and field team’s MVP. It was quite an honor for the young man, who was competing with so many talented teammates.
Today, Taylor becomes the third NHS boy over the past year honored as Smith Ford LLC/Giant’s Warehouse/Evening Sun Athlete of the Week, and the traits that Taylor embodies are nearly identical to those of his teammates.
“He’s along the same lines as Matt Murray and Kyle Acenowr,” said Norwich head varsity boys coach, Paul Sims of his standout athletes who have earned weekly athlete awards. “We have a bunch of people on our team like that. Patrick will do whatever he is asked, he is very respectful, and if you give him a workout to complete, he always gets it done.”
Looking at Taylor’s performance this season, and you see a level of consistent excellence. He has placed and scored points in every event he has entered this season, and he is usually near the top or on top. Just in the last 10 days, he has dominated the competition. Taylor participated in dual meets against Susquehanna Valley and Owego, and he sandwiched those duals around the Norwich-hosted REK Invitational last Friday. In the 12 events Taylor has entered, he has 10 first-place finishes, and the other two events he placed second. Just to give credit where it is due, three of his wins have come in relays where Taylor has served as the lead-off man.
“He’s definitely explosive out of the blocks,” Sims said of Taylor’s sprinting. “ Morgan Crawford is our fastest guy this year, and Patrick is probably not that far behind. People don’t know that about him – that he is that fast. There hasn’t been that many times this year when he was running the first leg of the relay, and he wasn’t the first one making the exchange.”
Taylor’s explosiveness and speed serve him well in the field events where he is a consistent winner in the long jump and triple jump. Amid the best weather Norwich has seen at a meet all season, Taylor set personal records in winning the long jump and triple jump against Sus Valley. He leapt 21-feet, 7-inches in the long jump, just six inches shy of the school record, and followed that up with a 41-foot, 2-inch leap in the triple jump. Taylor has augmented his versatility in the high jump, and surely will establish new personal-bests by the end of the season.
“He’s still improving, and the best thing is that he listens,” Sims said.
Taylor is aware that as a varsity standout, the younger kids on the Norwich team and up-and-coming track athletes look up to him. Sims said Taylor understands he is a role model, and goes out of his way – with no prompting from anyone – to assist the next generation of Norwich athletes.
“I was at a modified track meet a couple of weeks ago, and I saw (Patrick) working with three or four of the jumpers and just talking to them,” Sims said. “To find a varsity athlete to go out of his way to help the younger kids, those athletes are hard to come by. He did it without me or anyone else asking him to do it. That says a lot about his character, and he wants to help the track program.”
Taylor is more than doing his part to help the Norwich track and field this year, and he is a key component in the Tornado’s drive toward their first STAC division championship in over 15 years.