When she is not at school, she can almost always be found on the track or field hockey field. Francine Stevens ’23 is a multi-sport athlete who continues to break records during her years at Staples.

Stevens has especially made her mark in the world of track. She has received an All-FCIAC title as well as an All-State title. Along with that, she has broken school records in five different track events, just by her sophomore year. 

Despite these impressive accomplishments, Stevens was not satisfied. At her first track meet this year, as a junior, Stevens and fellow teammates qualified for nationals. 

“In order to make nationals you need to get a certain standard, and we were able to be under the standard,” Stevens said.

Stevens qualified in the 55 yard dash, as well as the 4×200 relay alongside three other teammates: Sami Dewitt ’23, Molly Liles ’22 and Talia Moskowitz ’24. 

“We all were super excited since we talked about nationals during practice as a way to motivate ourselves,” Stevens said. “But we didn’t know we would qualify in our first meet of the season.”

Although they were surprised, the girls worked exceedingly hard to earn this achievement. Their training has only escalated since preseason began.

“Most of our current conditioning is from preseason offseason work but we have been working hard in practice for the past few weeks as a team,” Stevens said. 

The Staples track team has qualified for nationals as a whole a small amount of times, and Stevens never has. Because of this, the thought of nationals motivated Stevens to push herself. 

“My goal for nationals is to represent Staples and use the high level competition to push myself and my teammates to get even better times,” Stevens said.

Nationals will be taking place at the armory in New York City near the end of their season, on March 11-13. Other Staples runners can still qualify at the remainder of the meets before Nationals.