Junior Jenna Monaco placed in two events at the State Meet of Champions and led to Dumont to its first indoor state sectional title this winter.
DUMONT – There is a small list to consider when trying to determine Dumont High School’s best all-time athlete. Sean Lissimore made it to the NFL. Dom Barlow is now on a two-way contract with the Atlanta Hawks of the NBA, Jerry Pegram played Division 1 hoops at West Point and there are a couple of others on the fringes that could be debated.
And then there is Jenna Monaco, who just completed the best indoor track season in school history. A junior, she is rocketing up the list. She qualified for three events, participated in two and placed second in the pole vault and seventh in the 55-meter hurdles at this year’s indoor State Meet of Champions.
“I put her definitely in that group and maybe even higher than that group. Just looking at the records that she has set, one of them has been there since 1983 and she crushed that,” said Jim Wichmann, the current principal of Dumont High School and the former football coach, who has been inside the Dumont school district for 27 years. “It’s to the point that you start comparing some of her times and her scores to the boys because that is how dominant some of them are.”
Monaco is forcing a renovation of the Track & Field records board in the gym. She still has two outdoor seasons to go and one more indoor to expand on her legacy, but already her list of school records is impressive. Her specialty is the pole vault and she cleared 12-0, at this year’s State Meet of Champions where her second place finish was the highest place ever for a Dumont track athlete. That furthered her school record, which she first broke as a freshman at the Bergen County Meet of Champions. The former record of 9-foot-6 was held by her older sister Kara.
Sibling rivalry much?
“Oh, yeah. The first thing I did when I cleared 10 my freshman year was I ran back to my mom and I said, “Call Kara. I beat her record. That is all I wanted to do,” said Jenna. “Every time I get a new PR I make my mom tell her.”
She also holds school records in the indoor (8.25) and outdoor (14.3) hurdles, the 100-meter dash and the outdoor long jump (18-3) record. The outdoor hurdles record had stood since 1983. She is self-motivated, so the indoor 55-meter dash, the indoor long jump and 200-meter outdoor records are all within her grasp and squarely in her sites.
“It’s easy coaching Jenna. She puts in the work at both practice and her outside training. She is so confident in her abilities and so focused during competition,” said Chris Messina, who just finished his first indoor season as Dumont’s head track coach. “She’s going to go out there and do her thing and then it is up to the other girls to try to beat her.”
That is not easy if this year’s indoor state sectional tournament is the barometer. Monaco won the pole vault, the 55-meter hurdles and the 55-meter dash, the three events she qualified for at the SMOC, for a total of 30 team points. The second place team had 29 points combined as Dumont claimed the North 1, Group 1 title, the first sectional title in the history of the girls indoor track program.
“When you have an athlete of Jenna’s caliber it changes the whole program. It reaches everywhere when you see Dumont track having success on a statewide level,” said Dumont athletic director Joseph Sutera. “It raised the level of her teammates and I think you see that with the girls indoor title. That is the first one here ever. You could see the level of the whole team rising. Even the kids that didn’t place, a lot of them still set their own personal records and I think that is because of how dedicated they are to the program and Jenna sets the tone.”
With her talent, Monaco could have jetted for a high school other than the one in the town she grew up in. By staying home, she made another statement. After all, second place in the State Meet of Champions is second place in the State Meet of Champions no matter what uniform is worn on the podium.
“When your best athletes stay home it is amazing what it does for your programs,” said Sutera. “She could have gone wherever she wanted, but she stayed here and look at the difference it made for us.”
Monaco still has plenty of goals to chase. She wants more school records, she wants more team success and she wants to ride track and field as far as it will take her. Jenna is the youngest of four siblings, her sister Kelly is currently playing Division 1 soccer at UConn and she has similar goals in her chosen sport.
A couple of schools have reached out, but making her college decision is one of the few things in Monaco’s life right now that is not all about speed.
“Obviously I want to go Division 1 and I want to go somewhere with a big track program, but I also want to make sure that the pole vault program is really developed and they have a really good coaching staff,” said Monaco. “It is not all about the name. I used to just want to go a school because the name is big, but now I am looking into the program and how the team is. I am taking my time.”
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