Despite not having their own track, dual athletes, the Track and Field team are killing it.
Adriona Austin / Equinox Staff
Sophomore Nicole De Alemeida, who plays for the women’s soccer team and on the women’s track and field team said with no set time for practices the team still makes it work.
“I think the biggest obstacle with track is not having a facility, so it’s always hard to try to find practice times, not a set schedule every day but we make it work, we make the best of it.” De Alemedia said. Having a team that motivates one another is a big factor when it comes to frustration.
“Our coaches are really good at motivating us if we have a bad meet or practice, and our teammates – we’re all pretty supportive of one another,” De Almeida said.Teammate Jared Hannon recently qualified for the New England Division 3 Championship. He says it’s just an ordinary meet of the season.
“I don’t really look at it as some crazy important meet, that’s how you psych yourself out. It’s just another meet in the season,” Hannon said.
Hannon started running Track and Field when he was in fifth grade, with his family being his biggest supporters. He competes in long jump, 200 meter, 400 meter and 4×400 meter relay, but his favorite is the long jump.
or some, not having a track is a setback, Hannon said sickness is his. “ou lose so much when you aren’t able to practice,” Hannon said
Other dual athletes include first year Brandon Castor and junior Taylor Bisaillon. Both play for KSC’s soccer teams as well. But that doesn’t stop them from doing their best. Castor said coming to KSCto no track was something he had to get used to. “Back at home, I have a track, and here we don’t, so that’s the biggest controversy here…. The floor is definitely a new aspect that I’ve never really done before that’s probably the biggest challenge here.” Castor said.
Even though he’s only a first-year student, Castor has big goals he plans on achieving.
This past weekend, he placed first in the 400. “I never ran a 400 in indoors, I’ve only done it once outdoors and that was when I was a freshman in high school but I usually stay in 200 meter or under. And he (coach) really was pushing me for the 400 and I tried it for the first time and I ended up winning basically the whole meet,” Castor said. He wants to make it to the New England’s just like his teammateHannon.
“The rest of the season I do want to push myself to get to New England’s because that’s the biggest goal I have and I feel like that would be a good starting point for my freshman year so if I could at least go to the track and get a feel of the atmosphere and see what it’s like running with some top competitors.”
Bisaillon, who transferred to KSCher sophomore year said coming into this sport after a year of not practicing for it made her nervous.
“I was really nervous coming into both sports. I was more nervous for track because I didn’t do track at my last school, it wasn’t offered. I went a full year without doing any sort of track workouts at all so that made me really nervous and my senior year I wasn’t a runner, I was strictly a thrower,” Bisaillon said.
Being busy all the time actually has helped her here at Keene.
“I like knowing I have practices at this time, lift at this time, so that means I only have this much time to do homework, so it makes my days more structured and I can actually tell myself when I have to do things.”
Sheand Nicole De Alemeida feel the same way about not having a track. “The biggest obstacle is not having a place to run, especially since you need a track to do stuff. We don’t have any jumping facilities, we don’t have anything and the only rooms that we do have usually end up getting used by other programs,” said Bisaillon.
Adriana Sanchez can be contacted at
asanchez@kscequinox.com
