The 2023 Boys Outdoor Track season is underway at MCHS, and the team looks to build off a strong start to the season. One of the major successes of the team was placing 3rd at the county meet with several PR’s from players and even a new school record for pole vault.

Anthony Jacks, Science teacher and varsity assistant track coach at MCHS who is in his first year at MCHS, has been impressed with the way the team has performed early on in the season and hopes they can continue their successes.

“So far this outdoor season, we are looking pretty good,” explained Jacks. “The guys have been putting up some really impressive times for this early into our outdoor season.  A lot of them have been setting lifetime personal records.  We are really excited to see how the rest of the season will pan out.”

Jacks isn’t the only coach who is excited about the team’s recent performance at events, assistant coach Kevin Horst who is responsible for the long distance runners is excited about the future of the runners he is responsible for.

“Since we have no seniors on our long distance squad, my main goal is building for the future. In the short term, we will try to run personal best performances in the next few weeks,” described Horst. “I also have a goal of representing our school well at the conference meet and scoring some points in the long distance races.”

Horst explained how since the outdoor season marks the “end phase” of the season, the main focus is no longer training but more about the performance of the placement in events.

“The start of the season was in January, so in fact we are currently moving into the end phase,” explained Horst. “This is an exciting time of the season because our training tapers off and we focus entirely on performing in the races. It’s time to show off our hard training in the last few months. I think our team is in a good spot. With the quality of our young squad, we should be a competitive team over the next few years.” 

Though the coaches have been impressed with the team, so have the players themselves, senior Rayaan Ahmed has been ecstatic about the start of the season, and has noticed the overall improvement of team chemistry shifting from the indoor season to the outdoor.

“The team chemistry started out a little rocky during the indoor season but the upperclassmen have done their due diligence at cultivating a community within track. Everyone is willing to help one another out and the upperclassmen are always more than happy to help out. We [upperclassmen] try our hardest to help out the underclassmen in any way we can.” Ahmed explained.

Ahmed explained that one of the major factors of the team’s improvement is because of the coaching staff, as well as the upperclassman’s ability to work with the younger underclassman.

“Our team is currently improving day by day. I think having an extremely knowledgeable and dedicated coaching staff helps out tremendously. The underclassmen have a lot of talent and will flourish if they take advantage of the workouts and commit to track and field. Our team definitely has small, nitpicky things to improve upon but there’s nothing of major concern.” Ahmed said.