Track, Football
Favorite athlete: Hunter Woodhall and Tara Davis-Woodhall
Favorite team: Eagles
Favorite memory competing in sports: Going to nationals in Florida with my AAU track team last year
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: One year, I was playing around in the hotel at AAU nationals with no shoes on and accidentally sliced my toe open the night before 4x4 finals and had to get stitches and still run on it the next day.
Music on playlist: I like a lot of different genres so there’s not really a specific one but pre-race is usually like partying music and upbeat hype music.
Future plans: Compete at the collegiate level, and hopefully continue competing after college and become a coach and an athletic director
Words to live by: “I can do all things through Christ” - Phillipians 4:13
One goal before turning 30: Have a well-paying job, and setting up for me and my family to be financially stable for the future.
One thing people don’t know about me: I also like to do art in my free time.
By GORDON GLANTZ
If anybody had a senior year where the pieces all fell perfectly into place, it’s Springfield Twp’s track superstar and football contributor Caden Bronson.
After being one-fourth of some standout relay teams, Bronson broke out on his own and came away with a state gold medal in the 300 hurdles, an event he didn’t start working on until the indoor season during the
winter and then tried out once the sun decided to come out in the springtime.
“Yes, I would describe it as a very unexpected senior year,” he confirmed. “I was hoping to just continue to focus on the same individual events that I had done since my freshman year, but then I ended up trying something new to just get us some more points, and it everything just kind of worked out perfectly.”
Bronson was on one of fastest relays in state, but the quartet was hit hard by graduation and injury, opening the door for other options.
“I kind of figured that it was my own time to shine,” he explained. “My goal this year was to pave my own path outside of just the relay.”
That was fine with Springfield track coach Chris Stone, who was an assistant since Bronson’s freshman year and the head coach for both the indoor and outdoor seasons this year.
“He’s a pretty good one,” said Stone. “He has progressed. Just from his raw ability, he looked like a runner. He has a long legs and all that.
“He wasn’t really out there right away, making a name for himself on the state and district level. This is the first year that he has really taken off.”
Clearing Hurdles
Stone confirmed that he saw the tools were all there for Bronson to become a standout hurdler.
It was just a matter of making it all happen.
“We just kind of got going on this hurdles thing midway through the season, so we might want to explore to see if there are any better options for him if he wants to move forward with the hurdles, as opposed to just sprinting,” said Stone. “It’s something we played around with before. He clearly had natural hurdling ability. It just didn’t click right away. With that relay being so good, that is kind of where his focus went.
“He asked to run the 300 hurdles at a dual meet and won that. He stuck with it for postseason. It just kind of went from there. He just kept dropping times. It turned out to be the right decision.”
Twin Peaks
One can’t really talk about Caden Bronson without mentioning his twin brother, Caleb, who is also a standout in field events, namely the jumping events.
The Bronson twins combined for eight gold medals at the league meet this year.
“He does push me a lot,” said Caden. “Even though we don’t compete in the same events, we still push each other to do better. If he wins a meet, then I want to go out and win a meet. I feel like we push each other in that way.”
While Caden is a solid in the classroom, Caleb is a superlative student who is ticketed for Howard University.
“Both of them are highly regarded within the school – by teachers, peers, coaches – all of the above,” said Stone.
As for Caden, Frostburg State in Maryland has a solid offer on the table to compete on the Division II level, but the hope is that he can get some eyes – and stopwatches – on him at the upcoming New Balance meet later this month.
With the hurdles being relatively new to his repertoire, the sky is limit.
He said: “I feel like there is a lot more in store for me.”
A Gentle Leader
The deeply spiritual Bronson - an artist in his spare time who holds down a job at a local restaurant - ran AAU for the Just Do It team and considers that one of his best experiences.
He would love to remain in sports, as a coach and/or athletic director one day.
“I always loved helping other people - that means teaching them and also learning from them,” he said. “I’m a very outgoing person. My leadership style is more of a friendly type of style. I’m more of an understanding and calm type of leader. I don’t like to do a whole lot of screaming and yelling.”
That gentle style of leadership led him to being a four-year captain on the indoor team and a three-year captain come the spring.
Looking back, Bronson believes that being cast into a leadership role early on helped his overall evolution.
“It did,” he confirmed. “It was interesting, because I was a younger and less mature personality.”
Bronson started running track at the tender age of 6, and was previously locked into a routine before high school.
“I was used to doing my own thing and worrying about me,” said Bronson. “After a while, I realized that there are other people on the team and made sure that they warmed up on time, that they have their spikes and that the blocks get on the bus.
“It helped me to lock in and realize that I don’t need to just worry about myself. I had to help the coaches as a captain.”
Stone added that Bronson’s magnetic personality works in his favor.
“He has been a captain for three years now,” said Stone. “He is one of those kids who is just friends with everybody and not just with our team. It seems like he is friends with everybody on every other team, too. He has a great personality.”
Bronson also displayed leadership on the football team.
“Although technically not a captain. Caden was a terrific leader for us,” said football coach Chris Shelly. “His work ethic, passion and inspirational speeches went above went above and beyond.”
Throwing Stones
Stone was a 2015 graduate of Springfield who rewrote the record books and went on to become a decathlete at Auburn.
“To be able to come back to Springfield and coach an athlete like Caden, it doesn’t get much better than that,” said Stone.
Stone was the last Spartan to win state gold before Bronson, adding that he knows that records are made to be broken.
And that is just what happened with Bronson.
“I always joked with him about it,” said Bronson. “Ever since my freshman year, I always made fun of him. I was always telling him how I was going to take all of his records and stuff like that.
“Even though I talked a good game, I never thought I was going to break even half of his records. Coming into my freshman year, I think he had like six records up on the record board. I wasn’t expecting it, but I ended up catching it.”
Little did Stone know that an experiment of Bronson trying out hurdles would knock him off the record books.
“We were just started messing around a little bit during the indoor season, with him running the hurdles,” said Stone. “We just kind of threw him into the hurdles and he broke one of my school records in the hurdles.
“He wasn’t the only one on the team to break one of my records. I knew it was coming.”
On the Grid
Bronson is currently 6-0 and 165 pounds, but was once too small for the rigors of full-time varsity snaps on the football field.
That began to change in his junior year, and he became a starter in the secondary as a senior.
“Once I started to get more playing time, I realized that I had to really start to focus,” said Bronson, who wanted to thank God – along with his family, friends, teammates and coaches – for being with him on his dual-sport journey.
Added Stone: “It’s hard to keep that kind of speed off the field. He’s definitely a track kid but, when you have that kind of speed, the kind that he has, you have to find a way to get him to help you out on the field.”
Shelly was glad to have his athleticism at his disposal.
“Even though he was initially a track-first kid, he became a 100 percent football player his senior year and bled Spartan blue for our program,” said Shelly. “I loved coaching him. He waited in the wings and prospered in his time as a senior.”
As Bronson’s football playing time increased, so did his love for the sport.
And for his teammates, it meant inspiration, as he led them in voluntary prayers before games and then hyped them up before running onto the field.
When he missed time with a sprained MCL, Bronson helped to mentor the younger defensive backs who were taking his place before returning to finish out the season with a brace on his knee.
“He consistently helped our younger players develop their skills and essentially became an assistant coach on the field for us,” said Shelly.
Stone also played football at Springfield, and actually missed time with a serious knee injury, but wasn’t concerned about Bronson getting hurt.
As such, the dream senior season went on as planned.
“I remember my process from looking at colleges myself, and 90 percent of the coaches that I talked to absolutely loved the fact that I also played football,” said Stone. “During the track season, it really comes out. When it’s raining outside, and when it’s cold, that’s when you really see that football player mentality come out. The toughness you get from playing football can carry over when the conditions are not quite ideal.”
