The Oakdale High School Girls Indoor Distance Track team is working hard for this season. Every week, the girls run distance or work out for half the days, and the other half they run short distances. Coach Brian Dempsey, the girls distance coach, has been a part of track for over 30 years. This year, he is coaching the girls and boys distance teams.
There are over 30 girls on the distance team, and for some it’s their first year. Based on all of the training they put in for their meets, some of the girls that race faster than others have harder training practices than the girls that just started out this year. The team has some important meets coming up, such as two big meets at Shenandoah University, and the county championship on January 20th.
Track can be very hard, so to prepare the athletes mentally for distance races, they talk about trying to stay positive all the week before the meet and then just keeping all the negative thoughts out of their minds because a lot of the athletes get nervous, as Dempsey elaborates, “If you’re nervous, that means you care.”
“Drink lots of water. Stretch. Stretching is very important. Mentally, I listen to a lot of music before I run,” distance runner sophomore Johanna Mitchell states.
Mitchell has been running since she was little. She would run 5 kilometers with her mom, but when COVID happened, she stopped running. When she found out about the track team, she joined, and fell in love with the people on the team. Since practices are after school and gets home around 5:00 pm, she still does at least 30 minutes of homework, and tries to do her assignments during school time.
Senior Sydney Querry, one of the captains, started doing distance running because both her parents were distance runners when they were in school, and wanted to do the same. She became involved with the Girls Distance Track because her neighbor was on the girls distance team, and has got a lot of information . Since she has been doing track for four years, she has become the captain for working hard and has gained experience from the people she met her senior year.
Senior Maddy Chorney started track in her freshman year, and she joined track with Querry since she didn’t want to do it alone. Chorney also became a captain by being a role model, sharing her experiences, showing hard work to other people, and being a good leader.
The team captains organize spirit days on the day before track meets or the day of track meets. When they notice any of their teammates feeling down, they try to talk to them, and hype them up, and encourage them.
Overall, the girls have been working very hard and have been very successful so far. From their progress and how far they have come, it shows that they are hard workers and they are not giving up.
