As February creeps around the corner, the boys and girls track season is already underway. In the Highlands High School fitness center, the teammates gather to improve their skills and prepare for their upcoming meets.
Head girls’ coach Savannah Brady, a middle school Language Arts teacher, has been coaching for three years and was recently promoted to the high school level just before the season began.
Brady has big goals for the indoor and outdoor track seasons as a coach and for the athletes.
“For outdoor season we want to improve our ranking from regionals last year, we placed 9 at regionals, I think we can place 8 or better. Also, last year we had 1 girl qualify for state in 2 events this year I wanna qualify more than 1 girl in more events,” Brady said.
Along with Coach Brady having big ambitions for the season, some athletes are looking to improve their times in their events whether that be throwing another 1.5ft further or dropping milliseconds in your 100m.
Distance runners are also always trying to drop time when running their races.
“To drop a lot of time, specifically in the 2 mile (3200m),” Mirabel Go (9) said.
For the track girls, there are many different activities they can participate in, depending on their skills. Long distance, shot put, hurdles, high jump, long jump, and lastly sprints. The track can help improve speed and agility, but it can also help form bonds with teammates and create new friendships.
“It motivates me and it pushes me to keep working on myself, and I am also allowed to create bonds with other people and work with people and gain other perspectives and friendships,” Evelyn Hopping (12) said.
Along with helping form lasting friendships with teammates, track also has other lasting benefits for students at Highlands.
The athletes are able to learn how to warm up and cool down before and after workouts. They also can learn how to properly lift weights and what workouts help with what muscles.
Track helps with overall physical health, and also offers an opportunity to show off abilities.
“Physical health is always a key part of it, but also I love competing with teammates,” Brady Robinson (12) said.
For the girls track season, there have been team and individual wins. At the Mount St. Joseph meet on Friday, January 24, the Highlands team had multiple high placing runners including, Aaliyah Haretuku (9), Ava Perry (9), Emme Wilke (9), and Adrianna Mccafferty (9).
“I think our last meet that we went that was at Mt. St. Joe’s was really successful because we had like 14 girls, and honestly like almost everyone on the team got a personal record of all time not even just indoor that’s like outdoor too,” Brady said.
