Jamestown High School’s track team is gearing up for the spring season, keeping individual goals in mind.
As the upcoming track season approaches, Jamestown track and field coach Michelle Sumner said with such a small team, they currently don’t really have any team goals, but they do have individual goals.
“Since we are such a small team, it is hard to make goals, such as winning meets,” Sumner said. “We tend to focus on individual goals. And with not having a season last year, we are making sure that we leave some of those open right now, too. I’ve told our kids to focus on making improvements one meet at a time. We have kids that are looking to break records or make advances once we get to the district level, but all of our goals are individual.”
Sumner said, right now, the team’s biggest focus is on staying healthy so it can participate in every meet that it can. COVID-19 is not the only obstacle the team will have to deal with to stay healthy but injuries as well. Some of the athletes are also working on fine tuning aspects of their events; Sumner said this includes focusing on proper form and technique in field events.
“Since we run on hard pavement, because we don’t have a facility, shin splints and ankle injuries plague us,” Sumner said. “We are trying to focus on stretching properly to prevent injuries. We are also working with our kids to know the difference between pain due to not being in shape and pain due to injury so that they can back down when they need to. We want for our kids to be able to run the entire season this year.”
With last season being canceled due to the pandemic, Sumner said there are some differences with getting ready for this season, but for the most part, the Eagles are getting ready as normal.
“The biggest difference this year has been the amount of injuries already on our middle school level,” Sumner said.” Some of those kids haven’t done anything in a full year, so they are struggling a bit. We are working through some things, so we should be OK by the time we get to some of the bigger meets. Other than that, it’s pretty much business as usual. Thankfully, we are an outside sport, so we haven’t had to take as many precautions as some of the indoor sports have had to take.”
As the season moves along, Sumner said she is hoping to see big improvements from some of the older athletes who missed last season.
“It will be interesting to see what a kid can do as a junior when we haven’t had a solid time (and) distance on them since they were a freshman,” Sumner said. “When you miss an entire season, you miss seeing some of the progression we typically get to witness.”
Sumner said she wants to see the athletes have fun during the season, as well as records being broken and personal records being set.
“I just want our kids to have fun and enjoy the fact that they get a season,” Sumner said. “I want to see records broken and PRs set. We have a few kids with some lofty goals, and I’m hoping that they can reach those goals since they were unable to last year.”
Jamestown Eagles track season schedule
April 1 - 4 p.m., vs. Fayette at CMU relays
April 9 - 3 p.m., at Harrisburg and Eaton Relays
April 10 - 10 a.m., at Russellville Relays
April 13 - 4 p.m., at North Callaway
April 21 - 4 p.m., at Harrisburg
April 27 - 9 a.m., at CCAA meet at Glasgow
April 30 - 2 p.m., at Glasgow Relays
May 5 - 2 p.m., at Glasgow
May 8 - TBA, at District Meet