Isabella Alvarez completed four events on the first day of the New Jersey track and field sectional championships.
Then, she had a club soccer game to get ready for.
It’s eight hours of hell for the average athlete, but not for the Pleasantville freshman. Alvarez is a pentathlete and a soon-to-be heptathlete — meaning she does, well, just about every event in track.
“It used to be complicated because I’m all over the place sometimes,” Alvarez, who won three gold medals, said with a big smile after Day 1 of the meet at Delsea. “But I’ve gotten used to it.”
A standout midfielder who led the Greyhounds to their best soccer season ever in the fall, Alvarez has been a phenom in track and field for Pleasantville, showcasing her stardom across all her events.
Indoors, the pentathlon is made up of the 60-meter hurdles, 800, high jump, long jump and shot put. Outdoors, the heptathlon is the 100-meter hurdles, 200 dash, 800, high jump, long jump, javelin and shot put.
And she doesn’t just compete in all of these events. She thrives at them.
She has a long jump PR 18-4 from over the winter that ranked No. 7 in the state, a PR 14.41 in the 100 hurdles that stacks up No. 9 this spring, a high school shot put PR and N.J. No. 17 mark of 39-8 this season, and she’s one of nine high jumpers in the Garden State to have cleared at least 5-6 this spring. She has gone as low as 27.32 in the 200 and 2:31.03 in the 800 dating back to her middle school days.
“I started doing the pentathlon when I was 12,” Alvarez said. “My dad [Kevin Mays] said, ‘Hey, you can actually get far in this.’ He was a high jumper and sprinter and he trains me every day. He helps me emotionally and physically because he’s with me every day.
“She doesn’t waste time with events,” Pleasantville girls track head coach Irvin Marable added of Alvarez. “She focuses on every element of what she’s doing and she studies it. When you get an athlete who’s that in tune with what they do, success isn’t too far. She has a vision.”
The only heptathlon events Alvarez has yet to try in high school competition are the 400 hurdles and javelin. She feels good about the progress she has made in the shot put, but the javelin is going to be an event she thinks may take time to master.
“I haven’t thrown a javelin yet at a meet,” Alvarez said. “I’ve practiced it a few times. It’s different from throwing anything else. At first, I was throwing it like a football, so I had to learn how to throw it right.
“The shot put is becoming more consistent,” she added. “I threw over 45 with the smaller shot put last year [in eighth grade]. Indoor, the bigger shot put was a big difference, but it has become easier for me now. My coaches are helping me throw and my dad is starting to learn too so he can teach me. Once I started throwing [in the multi events], that’s when I realized I could do anything.”
The biggest hurdle for Alvarez is finding time to get all of this into her schedule.
“We have to learn what days to work on sprinting instead of hurdles because sometimes I have soccer that day,” Alvarez said. “Then the next day, I’ll work on long distance because I also have to do the 800 for multi-event. Sometimes, if I have track practice and a game on one day and a meet the next, I can’t play in the game because I won’t perform at my best [for track]. I have to rest too.”
Alvarez became a multi-eventer by trying more events in an effort to get a feel for what she enjoyed, but there are other approaches to becoming one. Some find confidence in one event that could provide an advantage before delving into the others over time.
That’s the avenue 800-meter and high jump specialist Danya Spoor chose. The Oak Knoll senior and Clemson pledge is being recruited to compete in the heptathlon in college and like Alvarez, she has indoor pentathlon experience.
Danya Spoor of Oak Knoll competes in the girls high jump during the Union County Championships Day 2 at the Hub Stine Sports Complex in Plainfield, NJ, Wednesday May 22, 2024.Duncan Williams | For NJ Advance Media
Spoor has an older sister, Elsa, who ran for Chatham and now is a heptathlete at Virginia. Elsa had always been a motivator for her younger sister, but it wasn’t until Danya’s junior year that she took up track and field.
“I realized that I liked a wide variety of events, but I felt like wasn’t national-champ good at one event,” Spoor said. “I followed in my sister’s footsteps because I copy her in everything. Our best events are the high jump and 800. A lot of heptathletes don’t have the 800 edge because they’re all mostly sprinters, so we figured we could be competitive in that.”
Spoor would tell you other athletes should try to become pentathletes and heptathletes.
It might just earn you a full ride to Clemson or star potential early in your career like Alvarez is seeing. And who doesn’t love a challenge?
“I think it’s definitely hard because there’s such a low amount of [high school] meets to do it at,” Spoor said. “It’s really only nationals and a few other meets where you’re only doing the hep or pent. I think open events at meets help too because we can get really good at those. I think people should pursue it more though. It’s underrated.
“If you’re not made for it, it becomes straining and stressful, but we’re blessed that she enjoys it,” Marable added of Alvarez. “She’s leading the other girls and letting them know that these things are possible. She’s showing other kids that they can be a pentathlete too. That’s the most exciting thing about it.”
Ryan Patti can be reached at rpatti@njadvancemedia.com or via direct message here.
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