As fall comes to a close, for all high schools around the nation, winter sports begin to make their introduction. As much of the student body gathers to support the teams such as boys’ or girls’ basketball, many programs go under the radar. One of these is the boys’ indoor track team, whose members have been preparing for the upcoming season now that fall cross country has concluded.
The indoor track squad has been training for their first meet on Dec.16 as they hope to start off their campaign with a victory at the Coach Saint Invitational and continue their momentum as a program.
“Being one of the few guys on the team who did not do cross country in the fall, I have had more time to work individually, like with weights to build my explosiveness, ” Oliver Galin ’25 said. “Although our first official practice is on Nov.30, we have started to work in groups a little bit and it’s been fun.”
Many of the runners on the indoor track team are coming off a successful cross country season where they finished third in FCIACs. While there is a lot of overlap between the two sports in terms of personnel, there are still a lot of new faces, as indoor track will consist of much shorter races, the longest of them being the two-mile.
“It is convenient that a lot of the cross country runners also do track because their training for longer races allows them to get impressive times when the distance is cut down,” Captain Ben Llorenz ’24 said. “Getting into running shape is always very smooth for everyone.”
Last year, despite possessing many talented seniors who went on to run at the collegiate level, the Wreckers fell short in states and the FCIACs. They were able to take first place in the FCIAC Western Divisionals, however.
“Losing a lot of guys is going to be a challenge as many of them were big point scorers in meets,” Galin said. “I am still confident in the group though because we have a lot of young guys with talent who should fill in their spots nicely.”
With their season lasting potentially all the way until March for Nationals, qualifying for this competition and making their return to this stage is an important objective for captains Ben Lorenz ’24, Luke Rabacs ’24 and Michael Bernier ’24.
“We definitely want to get top three in the state,” Lorenz said. “Some of the other teams have a few very good runners and then they fall off, but we have a lot of depth and consistent runners that can put up a lot of points. I think this can lead us to gain advantages over other teams.”