Coming off a very successful cross country season for both the boys and girls teams, many of the same runners are looking to continue that success in the indoor track season.
Both cross country teams reached the regional meet where top runners sophomore Mikyas Sahlu and freshman Julia Ghiselli placed very high in their respective meets. Runners are looking to continue working hard in practice to ensure similar results from the cross country season.
The distance team looks to improve in the indoor season through workouts and repetitions.
“We want to improve through our workouts,” junior Vitalina Fuentes said. “Repeating them every two weeks and seeing if you can do them at a faster time helps shows improvement.”
The track team faced stiff competitions in all events at the first meet of the season that took place on Dec. 2 at Episcopal High School.
The Atoms competed against the Fairfax Rebels and Robinson Rams.
Many Atoms have set individual goals and points for improvement from previous track seasons.
“My personal goal for this indoor season is to be at the same level I was at last year,” Fuentes said. “I say this because it is hard to transition from cross country to indoor track.”
As it currently stands, both the boys and girls track teams have many experienced runners and strengths overall.
“One of our current strengths is that the boys team has a lot of speed,” Head Coach Phil Harris said. “We are looking for them to win the region this year which hasn’t happened since about 2010 or 2011.”
The sprints team has improved greatly from last year and has a legitimate opportunity to be successful in conference and regional meets.
“We were close to winning the region last year,” Harris said. “But we are stronger this year than we were last year.”
With the changing of conferences this year across all sports, teams find themselves being much more evenly matched.
“With us going to the new conference we are pretty even so we are expecting close to the same results,” Harris said.
However, there are many new faces to the track team this season that do not have previous track experience.
Many runners are setting specific personal times they want to hit in their respective events.
“My goals are to hopefully break five minutes in the one-mile run,” senior Nghia Nguyen said. “For the two mile I want to get under eleven minutes.”
The long term goal for the Atoms track team in the indoor track team is to prepare for the spring season while also looking to be successful in a wide range of events during the winter season.
Participating in meets during the winter season will help in getting ready for many of the same events in the spring track season.
Another goal of the Atoms is to continue building chemistry between teammates.
An important overall goal we have is to grow together more as a team,” Harris said. “We want to have unity with the whole team.”
Improvement throughout the indoor track season will be essential in determining the overall success of the team come the spring track season.