The Day's All-Area Girls' Track & Field Athlete of the Year: East Lyme's Savannah Soleau

July 07, 2021 12:00 am • Last Updated: July 08, 2021 4:58 pm

By Vickie Fulkerson
Day Sports Editor

East Lyme High School junior Savannah Soleau was the Eastern Connecticut Conference Division I shot put champion at 35 feet, 5 inches, going on to finish third in Class MM (36-0.75) and at the State Open (personal best 37-3.75). Soleau was named The Day's 2021 All-Area Girls' Track & Field Athlete of the Year. (Sean D. Elliot/The Day)
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Both Savannah Soleau's parents are former Division I athletes, her dad Chris a former football player at the University of Rhode Island and her mom, the former Janelle Johnston — a Windham High School and University of Kansas graduate — still the Connecticut State Open indoor track record holder in the high jump at 5 feet, 7.25 inches.

"Ever since I was young, I kind of almost wanted to beat her," said Soleau, a junior at East Lyme High School.

At first, Soleau thought her calling might be basketball, for which she still holds a certain fondness. Then came her first Eastern Connecticut Conference outdoor track meet as a freshman. Soleau was 14th in the 200 meters.

That was before she found her niche as a thrower.

Soleau was named The Day's 2021 All-Area Girls' Track & Field Athlete as the region's top shot putter. She won the ECC Division I title with a throw of 35 feet, 5 inches and was third in the Class MM state championship (36-0.75) before turning in her season's crowning achievement at the State Open, June 10 at New Britain's Willow Brook Park.

Soleau was third at the Open with a personal best 37-3.75, the top finish of any local athlete.

She was fifth in the ECC and Class MM in the discus, too, which along with the javelin is a work in progress.

"(East Lyme coach Carl) Reichard made me," Soleau said with a smile of her budding career as a thrower. "He told me, 'I want you to try shot put.' I was like, 'I'm not going to do good at this.' Until I finally learned. I went from 24 feet to 27 feet."

Reichard, East Lyme's coach for the last 44 seasons, explained.

"What actually triggered that was a combination of seeing her in the weight room and seeing her throwing medicine balls," Reichard said of placing the slightly built, 5-foot-8 Soleau into the throws. "She's a good sprinter but not make-the-finals-at-states good. She has good speed and good power. She's tall. I thought she could be a good thrower if she tried it.

"She was thinking initially she might do the heptathlon. She was jumping and sprinting. She started a little bit of throwing stuff. We saw really good potential in the throwing."

By the time Soleau hit the indoor track season as a sophomore, she was ECC shot put champion at 32-1.75 and fifth in Class L (34-8), qualifying her for the State Open.

"She was on a roll," Reichard said. "She was beginning to show a lot of promise, mostly shot put because in the winter that's the main throwing event. We didn't get a chance to do much discus and javelin."

Then the 2020 spring season was canceled due to COVID-19, as was the 2020-21 indoor season which followed, although East Lyme held a handful of indoor dual meets outdoors as the state allowed after March 1. Soleau, reduced to practicing the shot put in her back yard during the pandemic, improved her range by two feet in the time off.

And she's improving still.

"I like the people I throw with. It makes me enjoy it so much more," Soleau said recently. "Throwing, I meet so many people. We're like, 'Hi! Hi!' It's not as stressful as the other events. Throwers ... we just do whatever. To finish third in the State Open is amazing to me, to get my PR.

"(The results in) throwing were such a big drastic difference (from running and jumping). Discus, I just started this spring. I'm working on discus for next year, working on all three throwing events. (Reichard, a former thrower) is not afraid. He'll stand right next to me when I'm throwing the discus. I'm like, 'You need to stand outside the net. What if I drop it?'"

Soleau, who started attending Reichard's youth track clinics when she was younger, now helps coach them. She is a self-described "laid-back" competitor, who hopes to eventually major in business or as an animal rehabilitation therapist — she loves dogs and horses.

She plays volleyball at East Lyme and at the club level. She's currently working as a hostess at the Waterfall Cafe in Harrsiville, Rhode Island, near where her family resides for the summer.

"In all the training, she's pretty laid back," Reichard said. "She's very friendly, very outgoing. Even at the State Open there wasn't a huge amount of intensity in her face, but she explodes on things. ... We're just scratching the surface. If we can get more time in all the events, she has the capacity to throw quite farther."

v.fulkerson@theday.com

A relative newcomer to throwing, East Lyme junior Savannah Soleau was named The Day's 2021 All-Area Girls' Track & Field Athlete of the Year as the region's top shot putter. She capped the season with a personal best throw of 37 feet, 3.75 inches to finish third at the State Open championship, the top finish of any local girls' competitor at the meet. (Sarah Gordon/The Day)
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