This year’s winter track season has gone very well for the girl’s team. Sophia Draxler, Kate Shaw, Lindsay Portland, and Greta Hecker placed in the top 20 for Morris County. The team won the Morris County Championship and NJAC Championship, ending their season on a high note. The Mendham community is very proud of how well the track and field team has done this past year and in other seasons.
According to Sophia Draxler the weather “was perfect for all [the] races” allowing them to participate in all the scheduled races. There was only one race they couldn’t participate in because of the severity of the rain and cold that day. Although this race was canceled, the team has run in many races with unfavorable weather. The team is very deliberate with deciding which races they will run because they cannot risk an injury on the team. This means avoiding wet trails that might make a runner slip and injure themselves. Because the team is quite small with only 14 girls on the team, the team really cares for each other.
Next year the team will be losing two seniors, Sophia Draxler and Marissa House, but the team believes they have learned a lot from them and are ready to continue their victories next year. They are also confident in the five freshmen who joined this year’s team. Although they are new to the team, they will be just as instrumental to the team’s success. Senior Sophia Draxler even says \the team will have a great chance at winning more championships next year.
This year the track and field team saw some new technology with the new Nike Dragonfly Spikes that were very popular and many of the players were wearing during races. These shoes were built to be lightweight so runners could perform at the fastest possible time. One of the cool features about this shoe is that it has detachable spikes, which might be why runners choose to make the switch to this shoe. Besides the potential of new shoes, all other parts of the uniform stayed the same.
The team’s home court is Greystone Park, which is not that far away, allowing the players to get home at reasonable times after meets and finish their schoolwork. The team practices Monday through Saturday for typically one and a half hours. They have a meet about once or twice a week. To prepare for the meets they get to the park about an hour or hour and a half before they start the meet. During this time they stretch out and warm up to get ready for the meet. The race is about an hour and a half, and when completed, the team does a 10-minute cool down before they get on the bus to return home.
The larger championship meets are in Holmdel, which is about an hour away from Mendham. This means the championship days are longer; however, they can be more rewarding. The team only participates in meets in Holmdel 2-3 times during the season, so there is not too high of a demand from all of the players.
The team has done incredibly well this season and cannot wait to see what they will be able to accomplish next season.
