Re-cap on Track and Field’s Successful Season

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Photograph by Alexandra Marusko

The girl’s track members sprint away from the starting line. SHS Track and Field competed against rival Kennard-Dale at home on April 30, 2019.

By Abby Paterniti, Reporter

The 2018 – 2019 Track and Field team has concluded  its season with the boys having a 5 – 2 record and the girls were 6 – 1.

This year included record breaking heights, district competitors and good memories to create a successful season for both the boy’s and girl’s team.

One of the best events the warrior’s competed in was the High Jump.

Senior Kenny Rhyne set a new school record in the high-jump reaching six feet, seven inches.

The entire team counted on individuals to push themselves to beat their personal record (p.r) and come out on top.

Junior Abby Martin was a top competitor in the Four-way event and believes that both personal and team recognitions played a part in this seasons success.

“I think there’s a lot of personal recognitions like Kenny broke the high jump record, and every meet we always counted on those individual points to help us win,” said Martin.

Although the team lost many high scoring seniors from last year’s season, such as Cait Burgess,  who was the only districts qualifier last year, this season was ultimately more successful.

Head Coach, J.C Lewis was very proud of how this season turned out, with four district qualifiers and school records broken it was overall an impressive season.

“It was great that we had four individual qualifiers for Districts one weekend, and I’m always a big fan of meets where we come out on top. Overall, I think the guys and girls went really well, as a team we were able to have a really good record overall, and because of our depth we had a lot of close meets in the season that we were able to win because we had people who were able to compete, with multiple people competing in each event to score points for us,” said Lewis.

Although Lewis and others believed there was ultimately no imperative weakness within the team, a few of the members feel there was some depth lacking.

Some personal records unfortunately were not met; for example, senior Allison Rodgers was nine inches lower than her p.r from last year.

“I was 9 inches lower than my p.r last year and they ( the coaches) were like ‘oh maybe you could get the school record this year,’ and then that just didn’t happen,” said Rodgers.

In hopes of beating his personal records, junior Matteo Vega aims to push himself and others to beat their records for next year’s season.

“Next season, for me in particular, I want to be better than Cody in the 800 and the 400. Regardless, if I end up better than him or not, I know for me I can drop to get some really fast times for the team. We’ve been getting better each year, so I know I can only improve,” said Vega.

Overall, this season was very successful, and the vast amount of improvement from last year’s season to this past season has been apparent.