Although the CCHS track team has gotten outdoors to run a few times, much of their first month of training has been indoors at the school. Here Coach Chris Hegg, with Alyssa Martinson on his shoulder, follow Maya McHugh while just behind on the left Audrey Summers (wearing the volunteer T-shirt) works hard to keep up with the pace.
Seventy degrees and sunny sure feels nice on a day right after another snow storm. This is how the Viking Track and Field team opened up its season. I should mention that the meet was indoors. We brought 35 athletes down to University of Wisconsin, Superior. Teams in attendance included Virginia, Duluth East, Hermantown, Cloquet, International Falls, Esko, Mesabi East, Eveleth- Gilbert, South Ridge and many others. The winning teams included International Falls on the girls’ side and Cloquet on the boys’ side. Cook County girls came in 9th and the boys came in 13th.
We have many new female athletes this year and they have been working hard. A surprise addition to our team has been a group of sprinters. This group includes Anna Carman (senior), Sophie Eliasen (7th grader), Reilly Wahlers (7th grader) and experienced Molly Thomas (9th grader). They showed that they are going to be a solid sprinter/400m nucleus to our team. This was our 4x200m relay team, which took 7th out of 22 teams running a time of 2 minutes and 4 seconds.
As coaches, we were impressed with their determination, and their work with the hand-offs. They weren’t necessarily all perfect during this race but they came back in the 4x400m and finished 5th out of 20 teams with a team of Molly Thomas, Sophie Eliasen, Reilly Wahlers, and Maya McHugh (8th grader). Their additional practice and learning from earlier mistakes showed as their hand-offs were beautiful and helped them to run a time of 4 minutes and 46 seconds. This group of girls will be a fun one to watch as both of these relay teams could be in the hunt with some of the top teams in our section and conference.
Our boys’ team was short a few individuals but there were several sparks here too. Our 4×800 team including Joey Chmelik (senior), Finn Garry (8th grader), Leif Anderson (7th grader), and Roman Schnobrich (10th grader) ran well. Each of them raced a really nice leg of the race and their hand-offs were also well done. They finished with a time of 10:23.
Cy Fortunato ran a nice 60m dash (7.9 seconds) and a 200m Dash (26.7 seconds). He has really improved his block starts and this improved skill will help him to bring his times down during the season. We have a solid group of younger male athletes who will be fun to watch as the season progresses. They are working on getting into good running shape and as they get some races under their belts, learn how much effort to expend and how to pace they will have many successes. The great work ethic that they have been shown so far in practice will carry them far.
This was just a snippet of our very first meet of the season. Another highlight was that no one missed their event! This is a huge accomplishment for the first meet of the year. There are a lot of things to watch and listen for at a track meet and when you are in this foreign environment that you have not yet explored it is easy to feel distracted and out of your own skin. We have an impressive, focused and hard working group of athletes out this season. I enjoy wrapping up my day with them. This will be a fun group to watch get in shape, learn new skills, and grow as athletes and teammates. Our next track meet will take place at 4 p.m. in Two Harbors on the 22nd of April.
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