Keeping Track of the Track Team (Women's)
Taken from Unsplash.com
The women’s track team is two events into their indoor season, already breaking records.
“We are in a much better place than we’ve been previously,” Coach Caleb Morgan said. “We’ve really brought in a lot of really good quality athletes, and we’ve added a lot of events that we didn’t have last year which has been huge for us.”
The indoor season started on Jan. 22, at Emory University where the Lady Flames placed sixth out of 24 teams. The team traveled to Winston-Salem, N.C. on Feb. 3, where Junior, Audrey Smith set a new school record in the 3k.
The Lady Flames began training for the season in the fall, starting with weightlifting and conditioning before adding running.
“We don’t want to give them too much too soon because we don’t want them to over-train or get injured so it’s just a building process where we add more and more volume as the season progresses,” Morgan said .
The team has added more depth to the roster this season with Nicolette Gordon, a redshirt freshman transfer from Kentucky, Camilla Simms, and Hannah Buttolph. Buttolph is the only female to win four state championships in a row; she won her freshman, sophomore, junior and senior year.
“It’s another level of competition, and it’s really fun to compete against these high-level runners,” freshman, Becca Umbarger said. “There’s a lot of people who have improved even from the first meet to the second meet.”
Returning athletes Audrey Smith, Jessica Gullette, Cayce Bryan and Adrian Martin are key athletes this season. Gullette and Bryan are the top 2 athletes in the 800. Smith was conference champion this year in cross-country and Martin is a two-time All American.
“Indoor is building up to outdoor, and outdoor is where we achieve our main goals,” Smith said.
The Lady Flames are gearing up for the next event, in Birmingham, A.L. on Feb. 10. However, the team’s main goal is to run their best at the conference championship, at the end of April.
