Manitou Springs High School Track and Field officially started on Feb. 23. Head Coach Anna Mack, who has been coaching at Manitou for twelve years, is excited to take this season on.
She hopes that the team has a strong and successful season. “We want to win leagues for both boys and girls, which we have a high possibility of doing, and we want to send a really strong group to the state meet,” Mack said.
The track pre-season starts at the end of February and the season runs though until the middle of May. On a typical day the whole team warms up together. “We do a little bit of jogging, dynamic stretching, mobility work and then we split up into event groups,” Mack said. “And then everybody lifts as part of team practice, then we cool down, stretch and call it a day.”
This season Mack would like the team to have success. “I hope to see growth on the girls side, for the past two years we’ve had a low turnout, and it’ll be nice to see them grow and to have them have some success like the boys have had in the past few years,” Mack said. “Overall, for both boys and the girls just to have a strong season.”
Karsten Rogge, a junior at MSHS, is looking forward to this track season. To prepare, he participates in club track at UCCS. This season Rogge wants to go to state. “I would like to qualify for state as an individual this year, rather than on a relay,” Rogge said. “But I would also like to get a couple other relays to state, like the four by four, which we weren’t able to get to state last year.”
Mackinzy Wall, a senior at MSHS, has been on the track team since her eighth grade year. She likes the environment that track gives and hopes to pursue it in the future. “I really like the environment that track creates, especially in the throws area. Everyone’s just there to kind of have fun, you know, make a couple marks,” Wall said.
Wall believes that track is a team effort and that it takes a ton of discipline. “Even though it’s an individual sport, it’s still a team effort,” Wall said. “You have so many people around you to support you and help you. And progress isn’t really straight up, it goes up and down.”
A majority of the Track and field students participate in cross country in the fall, and because of this, Mack feels that when the students spend a lot of time together they do a great job of supporting each other. “Honestly, I feel like our coaching staff does a lot less of the motivating and they motivate each other. The majority of them are part of the cross country team, so the kids spend a lot of time together all year round, so they actually do a really good job of pumping each other up and working together,” Mack said. “The coaching staff gets them excited and we tell them what they need to do, but the kids kind of do that better than we ever could.”
