The Sage Informer

As the days get longer, and the air gets warmer, the Sages start to turn their attention to the track.  

The girls and boys track teams have begun preparing for the indoor track season. Coach Kyle Ness details how he is preparing his athletes for this season, saying, “We like to start out with practice right after Martin Luther King [Day, and] we practice three days a week…a lot of them…haven’t been doing anything all school year. Most of them played football or volleyball or had done something else so they’re not totally out of shape.” 

He stressed the importance of stretching, saying, “We get them stretched out. Stretching is a lot different from when I was in high school; it’s a little more active versus the static stretches we did, so we just try to loosen them up.”

In terms of the main focus of the practices, Coach Ness said, “We just go over the basic skills depending on their event. We had our first hurdle practice January 30th to get those hurdlers’ timing down. We’ll work on block starts and open hand offs, and we like to incorporate some kind of conditioning, so it’s not just conditioning at the end and working on handoffs separately…and get the technical side ready for the season particularly with block starts.”    

During indoor season when the weather is bad, athletes can be found running through the halls of MHS. The indoor season lasts until March, when outdoor officially starts. The teams, however, do utilize any chance they get to practice outside. Senior Cannon Ureno prefers outdoor track because “the track is longer. I’m not a fan of such tight turns on the indoor track.”

There are many different running and field events one can choose from when participating in track, including long distance running events, sprinting events, hurdles, relays, as well as jumping, vaulting and throwing events. 

Coach Ness’ favorite event to coach is hurdles. “I coach hurdles. All three of my kids did hurdles. I only coached my youngest Emelia in hurdles. It’s an event where you can see the hard work pay off. It’s very technical. You can’t just fake it. Some races you can coast in and you can’t coast in hurdles. You’ve got to run ‘em, but you can see the progress.” 

The athletes also each have their favorite events. Ureno states that his “favorite event to run is the 200 meter dash because it’s a longer race and it’s not as brutal as the 400 meter dash.”

One of the challenging aspects of track and field is building a team environment. Coach Ness said, “We don’t get a lot of [natural] team aspect in track because it’s largely individual, but we try and relays is one of the ways we can do that.”

Additionally, the athletes and coaches dedicate a lot of time to practicing in order to increase their speed in running events and their distance in field events. Since the boys and girls teams practice together and have the same coaches, they develop a sense of comradery and share many memories during the months of practice and during meets. Ureno said, “My favorite memory is staying the night at SIU Carbondale for a meet. That night we had a Madden tournament in our hotel room.”  

Coach Ness mentioned his all time favorite memory, as well. “In 2019, we placed third as a team in class 2A, which is an accomplishment given the size. We were one of the smallest schools in class 2A and we were really prime for the following year, 2020. We were ranked #1 going in and we wanted to win the state trophy. We were all ready for it, then this thing COVID happened, and we lost our opportunity. We went to the highs of highs winning a state trophy one year to the lows of lows not even being able to compete when we probably had our best team in history on the track.”

Come support the MHS Lady Sages at their first indoor track meet on Saturday, February 22th, at the Shirk Center in Bloomington, and The Sages on Tuesday, February 25th at Mt. Zion.

Kenzie Bundy, Staff Writer 

bunke27@sages.us