After quarantine, many sports have had to start from scratch and rebuild their teams, especially the track team. After school got back to semi-normal, track ended up losing a lot of older, more experienced athletes and gaining a lot more rookie middle schoolers who have a lot to learn.

“It is a weakness having all of the new kids on the team, but on the positive, they are more open and trust their coaches”, Head Coach Robert Gray said. 

Right now the team is starting off by finding the right event for each of the newer athletes. It’s all about placement and getting someone into the event that fits them best in order to help the team. 

Gray mentioned the team’s scrimmage from last week and how that really helped give the coaches a better idea of where some of the students might work better in order to add to the team.

“One of the positives (of having new athletes) is that they have a lot of potential and they just keep getting better and better,” coach Rachael Edwards said. “When they’re seniors that will give them and us an advantage.”

Edwards said that, in her opinion, watching an athlete beat their PR and perform the best they can is a win in itself. 

Losing and gaining so many students all at once gives a chance for various strengths and weaknesses to be added to the team.

“A weakness would be that with a younger team they don’t know how things work and they get really overwhelmed at meets and might miss their event or something,” Edwards said. 

“But an advantage would be that if they come into seventh grade being kind of good, then by 12th grade they could be region champs every year.” 

According to Edwards, in the end, one more push, one more hurdle or pushing that last little bit is worth a lifetime of glory. That little bit of pain is all worth it.