Nick Patton was discussing his athletic endeavors at Waynesburg Central High School other than track.

He mentioned football and said he used to wrestle. Used to?

"I gave it up this past winter so I could work more on my pole vault technique," he said.

OK, so did you do anything else to fill in the spare time?

"I almost hate to say this, but I did the play," he said with a sheepish smile.

The school play? You're kidding? What was the play?

"'Back to the '80s,'" he said.

When asked if he had a big part, he replied with a smile: "I was the comic relief. I sang, but not very well."

A junior at Waynesburg, Patton performed on the WPIAL's second-biggest track and field stage Tuesday at the Class AA championships at South Side Beaver High School in Hookstown. He was the lead character in one act and shared the spotlight in other.

Patton won the javelin event with a toss of 175 feet, 3 inches on a picture-perfect day with little or no wind. He followed that with a third-place finish in the pole vault. Patton, Chad Lemmon of New Brighton and Mike Kuhns of Valley all cleared 13-6, but Lemmon got the gold medal and Kuhns the silver based on fewer missed attempts.

Patton will compete in both events at the PIAA championships, which will take place Friday and Saturday at Shippensburg University. He will be busy on Friday, competing in the javelin at 9 a.m. and the pole vault at 12:30 p.m.

Usually if an athlete qualifies for the PIAA championships in two field events, he will do one Friday and the other Saturday. The PIAA splits up the shot put and discus, and the long and triple jumps because athletes are more likely to double up in those events so they are conducted on separate days, allowing competitors to rest and reload.

Qualifying for the PIAA meet in the pole vault and the javelin is unusual.

"Javelin is the thing I got into this year and coach [Duane Bowers] has been helping me out," Patton said. "Getting first is way past my expectations ... I was just hoping to get to states."

His first-place effort came in the preliminaries. Patton said he tried too hard on his final three throws.

"Some of the best throws are when you use your technique," he said. "Since I was in the lead, I just tried to heave it out there on my final three and didn't do as well,"

He got into throwing the javelin his freshman year. He gave it a try in a dual meet and didn't do badly. His throws have progressively gotten better.

Although he was golden in the javelin, Patton considers it his secondary event. The pole vault is his first love. He didn't enter the competition at the championships until the bar was at 11-6.

"My first couple of vaults were not so pretty," he said. "It took me some time to get warmed up."

That had something to do with running from one end of the stadium to the other while trying to juggle competing in the javelin and the pole vault.

What bothered him about placing third in the pole vault was that Patton didn't think he gave it his best shot. He knows he can go much higher.

"I know I have the potential to do more, that's what's disturbing. I didn't bring it all today," he said. "Hopefully I'll do that at states. This is nice, but states is when it counts ... that's when I'll bring it out. States is when it matters."

Not wrestling this past winter and working on his pole vault technique at Waynesburg College and at West Virginia University's indoor facility helped Patton tremendously.

"The pole vaulting season is short as it is, and when you count days when the weather is bad and you can't get outside ..." he said. "Doing the work in the winter helped a lot."

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AROUND THE TRACK: Monessen's Terrelle Irwin, a junior, picked up a gold medal in the 200-meter dash and was something of a surprise in the 100, finishing second to Center's Chris Kimbrough and ahead of Aliquippa's Rashad Kenney and Jonathan Baldwin. ... Senior Chris Spicer of South Fayette picked up a first place in the shot put.