Stevenson’s indoor track and field team has been competing since Dec. 5 in indoor meets and is ready to come back even stronger for their first outdoor meet on March 18.
Head coach Erick Camodeca says the weather has affected the team’s practices but they are doing everything they can to prepare and condition for the season ahead.
“We’ve been getting out of our strength phase and into our speed and endurance phase, practicing about once or twice a week at PG Sportsplex. We’ve also been going to McDonogh pool, to get some off-land practice,” he said.
Although it is difficult to find practice time with 12 inches of snow on the ground, the team makes the best of it. “Coach Berdan has the distance team all over the roads and any trails that we can find right now that don’t have snow on them. We don’t have many places to practice so we’re trying to improvise as much as possible to make a track out of anywhere that we can,” said Camodeca.
Even though the snow has set them back a bit, the team hopes their strength will get them very far this season.
“Our team is very deep and very young this year, which is great and exciting,” Camodeca mentioned. The coaches have done a lot of recruiting, bringing in over 60 freshmen this year. Even though the team is young, they hope that the new recruits will perform at a high level and replace the runners they graduated last spring.
“We are a team sport, but it is very individual, so it’s different for every single person out there. Everyone has their own different racing plan, everyone has their own different motivation when it comes to it, so we really just have to talk to our athletes and figure out what we have to say to each one to get them motivated. Sometimes most of them just go out there and do it,” Camodeca has high hopes for the team and continues to motivate his runners.
Stevenson will face teams this season that aren’t in Division III. The Mustangs enjoy competing against teams who are in larger divisions. While others may see this as a challenge, the team enjoys the competition and is able to see where they “stack up against the Division I, II, and III teams.”
Camodeca and the team believe this season looks promising. The team will travel to Winston-Salem to compete in their first meet at the Wake Forest Open on March 18.
