By River Mitchell
@rivermitchell27
With the first meet of the season only three days away inside the Field House on campus, the men’s track and field team is getting ready for another strong season. The team is looking to improve off of a season that saw three 1st place finishes for the team at the Springfield College Season Opener, the Springfield College classic and the Trinity College Invitational. This was also alongside three second place finishes as well at the Tufts Jumbo Invitational, Massasoit Classic and the NEWMAC Championship.
Practicing since early September, head coach Mike Miller has been putting his team to work, with practices twice a week along with lifting. Sprinters and jumpers have been lifting three times a week with throwers four times a week. The coaches also rely a lot on the leaders of the teams, with the twice a week practices being with the coaches, and also relying on team leaders to help out with other practices and workouts.
So far, the returning athletes haven’t skipped a beat and have also been a resource for first-year students entering the program.
“The returners are picking up right where they left off,” Miller said. “The first-years are taking what the returners are doing and deciding, ‘Let’s improve from here. This is the culture of the team [and] this is what we do.’ I would say all the first-years have stepped up in terms of training and I’m very impressed with what I’m seeing so far.”
One of the returners leading the first-year students is junior jumper Dan Hyde, who felt the energy shift this past Monday when the program entered ‘meet week.’
“We started captain’s practices halfway through September, so we’ve been working for a couple months now and we definitely feel ready,” Hyde said. “We felt the energy as soon as Monday morning came around, like ‘It’s meet week.’ We’re very excited to show everybody what we’ve been working on for the past couple months.”
Over these past few months, throwers have mainly been working on becoming more comfortable and more consistent. For track and jumpers, the main point of emphasis has been technique before extending it into endurance and creating more power and strength. Throwers have mainly been working on becoming more comfortable and more consistent, with the first-years also working on the adjustment in using a 16 pound and a 35 pound weight.
Since coaches joined the team in November, Hyde has seen a lot of positive growth with the team and have already seen some people hit new personal records.
“Since coaches started joining us, beginning in November, the energy has really been up,” Hyde said. “Everybody’s been really getting close to their marks that we ended off with last year, which is a very good place to start at. Believe it or not, records are falling in practice already before the first meet, in all seriousness, so it’s going to be really big coming home for the first meet. It’s going to be great.”
After their first meet at home on Saturday, the Pride have their next meet at the Reggie Poyau Memorial Invitational in Waltham, Mass,. With the start of the season almost here, Miller is very excited to get the season kicked off.
“I can’t wait,” Miller said. “It’s like a countdown from the last meet in May, to actually get to go back and do what we did. I can’t wait to see what we’ve been working on.”